[helsinkiandrew]

> They also found that some surgeons did not work on their birthdays

Is this partially that better/more experienced/senior/more affluent doctors are taking their birthday off, hence people getting more junior doctors?

It would be interesting to see how many more people die on a particular surgeons birthday compared with the rest of their year, rather than the birthday of the surgeon a patient gets.

[bottled_poe]

Those that are working on their birthday also more likely to do so under emergency situations...

[svrtknst]

Are they? Sounds odd that the norm would be for people to take birthdays off.

[steerablesafe]

It doesn't have to be norm, only statistically significant.

[boomboomsubban]

I may be making this up, but aren't there some rather strict rules about surgeons and alcohol? It may make them more likely to just take the day off.

[helsinkiandrew]

I'd guess that few surgeons start boozing at breakfast on their birthday or have a lunchtime drinking session to celebrate. But are more likely to be rushing off to have a party than actually be impaired.

[boomboomsubban]

I more thought you might need to request the day off to avoid being on call, surgeons have very unstable hours.

[phreeza]

The study controls for surgeon factors, so this is taken care of.

[habosa]

I remember a previous study showing that junior doctors were actually associated with better results since they were more recently trained and had less ingrained habits/biases.

Don't know if it applied to surgery though.

[ajsnigrutin]

Most critical cases (with higher chance of death) would probably be given to more senior, experienced surgeons, and that skews the statistics.

[ummonk]

Sounds like you're remembering the heart attack during cardiology conferences study? https://media.jamanetwork.com/news-item/patient-outcomes-whe...

[barry-cotter]

I would be surprised if it did. I believe the reduction in doctors’ overtime was a wash for parent safety as more shift handoffs and less sleep deprivation more or less canceled except in surgery where it increased mistakes.

[mattkrause]

Those studies are silly though—-the “reduced” schedule is often still something like 24 hours on-duty (vs 28).

Hand-off is also something that could, in principle, be improved whereas long shifts are just butting up against the limits of human physiology.

[albertgoeswoof]

I suppose what you want is someone with enough experience, but who hasn't been out of medical school for too long. Probably 7-10 years of experience would be the sweet spot.

I wonder if this applies to other domains as well.

[kleiba]

Those should be removed from the study.