Overloading Doctors May Put Patients at Risk

Speedup can cause plenty of stress on a factory assembly line, but it can also cause problems in healthcare. It may even put patients’ lives in danger.
That’s the conclusion from a scientific survey conducted by Johns Hopkins researchers. More than 500 hospital-based doctors were questioned about working conditions and patient safety. Two-fifths of these physicians replied that they often had more patients than they could care for safely. About a quarter of them say they find themselves in the danger zone several times a month. With more patients eligible for health care coverage but fewer physicians to take care of them the problem is only likely to grow worse.
[JAMA Internal Medicine, online, Jan. 29, 2013]