Residents of Ohio expect safe and swift care when experiencing medical emergencies. While this care is often delivered, there are instances in which a patient’s safety falls into jeopardy for avoidable reasons.
Fatigue of the medical staff is one of those reasons. Though avoidable, fatigue still impacts a huge number of medical professionals every day. This can lead to medical negligence, malpractice and errors that can put a patient’s life at risk.
Majority of medical personnel report fatigue
The National Institutes of Health examines common causes of medical errors. According to a study done on 130 postgraduate residents, 128 reported a form of error. Of these reported errors, 65 percent (85 people) stated that fatigue especially due to the long hours caused the error in question.
Unfortunately, fatigue in medical staff often leads to the injury or harm of the patients they care for. The Nurses Service Organization discusses the dangerous environment nurse fatigue creates. One study revealed that nurses get 5.2 hours of sleep on average during work days and often work consecutive 12 hour shifts.
Errors due to sleep deprivation
Due to this extreme sleep deprivation and high-intensity work environment, mistakes flourish. Common examples of errors due to sleep deprivation include:
- Administering the wrong dosage of medication
- Administering the wrong medication to the wrong patient
- Forgetting medication allergies and prescribing dangerous medicines to patients
- Accidental neglect I.E. forgetting to check in on a patient
- Slow response times in emergencies
And this just scratches the surface. The more sleep-deprived staff there are on hand, the worse and more dangerous a hospital can become. In these situations, any patient can end up injured and suffering.
