When hospitalists feel overburdened by workload, patient care suffers

A survey finds that hospital-based general practitioners feel overburdened by patient loads to the point where it has a negative impact on patient assessments, satisfaction and possibly safety outcomes.

Medpage Today: Patients Suffer If Hospitalists Overworked
Many attending physicians said they feel overburdened to the point where it has a negative impact on patient assessments, satisfaction, and possibly safety outcomes, researchers found. In a survey on workloads, 40 percent of hospitalists said their typical inpatient load exceeded safe levels at least once a month, and 36 percent reported having an unsafe workload at least weekly, according to Henry Michtalik, MD, of Johns Hopkins University, and colleagues. Excessive workloads caused nearly a quarter of hospitalists surveyed to say they'd ordered potentially unnecessary tests, procedures, or consultations due to inadequate time with a patient, while similar numbers said overwork "likely contributed" to patient transfers, morbidity, or mortality, they wrote online in a research letter in JAMA Internal Medicine (Petrochko, 1/28).

Kaiser Health News: Capsules: Patient Loads Often At Unsafe Levels, Hospitalist Survey Finds
Nearly forty percent of hospital-based general practitioners who are responsible for overseeing patients' care say they juggle unsafe patient workloads at least once a week, according to a study published Monday as a research letter in JAMA Internal Medicine (Tran, 1/28).