OK, so it’s not like we choose when we get ill, but if we there was a choice, I would recommend avoiding a certain day in August to go suffering a heart attack.
That day, is the NHS’s very own black Wednesday - a day when the rate of death creeps up by an alarming extra 6 per cent according to official figures. And the reason? Well, it just so happens that the day coincides with some new arrivals on the ward… junior doctors!
Every August, on the first Wednesday of the month, a whole host of fresh faced and over eager junior doctors arrive to put all their training into expert practice. But somehow, something is not quite going right, something rather disturbing.
According to researchers at the Doctor Foster unit and the department of acute medicine at Imperial College London, many have speculated for a long time that there is a jump in death rates on that arrival day, however it is only now that the suspicions are a proven fact. However they added that the increase, is only minor… so you’re safe… most of you.
Fingers are not being pointed at useless doctors or a lack of organisation at the hospital, rather a possible theory emerges that due to the influx of newly qualified staff, patient intakes are cut - and extended only to the most serious cases.
And it seems this is not just happening in the UK, as the researchers report, “A similar effect has been recorded in the US (known as the ‘July phenomenon’),” they comment in their paper, which is being published today in the open-access journal PloS (Public Library of Science) One. However studies in the past have only investigated a handful of hospitals.
This new research encompasses the situation on a much larger scale, analysing evidence from almost 300,000 patients in 175 hospital trusts over an eight year period from 2000 to 2008. The number of people who died on the first Wednesday in August was compared to the figures for the last Wednesday in July. The results showed a signifacnt difference in medical cases like heart attacks and strokes with an 8 per cent rise, while surgical deaths showed no difference.
“We wanted to find out whether mortality rates changed on the first Wednesday in August, when junior doctors take up their new posts,” said senior author Paul Aylin. “What we have found looks like an interesting pattern and we would now like to look at this in more detail to find out what might be causing the increase.
“Our study does not mean that people should avoid going into hospital that week. This is a relatively small difference in mortality rates, and the numbers of excess deaths are very low. It’s too early to say what might be causing it.”
Shree Datta, chair of the British Medical Association’s junior doctor committee,commented that the study needed to be compared next to other research into mortality rates before and after junior doctors took their posts. However he added, “Clearly even a small increase in death rates is of great concern and we need further research to see whether this is a real effect or an anomaly.”
