Over 90 Total Lots Up For Auction at One Location - WA 04/08

Radiologists make more errors when interpreting CT studies at night

by John R. Fischer, Senior Reporter | August 24, 2020
CT X-Ray
Radiologists reading body CTs at night are more likely to make errors than they would in the daytime.
Radiologists are making more errors when interpreting CT studies overnight than they are when examining scans in the daytime.

That’s according to researchers at Mayo Clinic, who found errors frequently occurred more in off-hour body CT interpretations examined overnight, and more so in the latter half of nighttime assignments. Radiologists were also found to have worse error rates at night compared to the day.

“The radiologists who were working overnight had schedules set up to give them ‘ample rest’," study author Dr. Maitray D. Patel, professor of radiology at Mayo Clinic Arizona, told HCB News. “They had 11 hours off before starting any assignment, and only worked a maximum of five nights in a row. The point is that someone has to read out the body CTs that occur after-hours, but are they susceptible to making more errors in doing that just because it is being done at night and they don’t always have a night schedule? Our study suggests that there is some impairment, even if they are well-rested for the night shift.”
stats
DOTmed text ad

New Fully Configured 80-slice CT in 2 weeks with Software Upgrades for Life

For those who need to move fast and expand clinical capabilities -- and would love new equipment -- the uCT 550 Advance offers a new fully configured 80-slice CT in up to 2 weeks with routine maintenance and parts and Software Upgrades for Life™ included.

stats
Discrepancies affecting acute or follow-up clinical care were classified as errors. Daytime hours were between 7 a.m. and 5:59 p.m., while nighttime was between 6 p.m. and 6:59 a.m. The study did not look at the performance of radiologists when working Monday through Friday during regular hours and instead compared performance at night on any day to performance during the day only on weekends and holidays.

The team examined 10,090 body CT studies of the pelvis, abdomen or both, interpreted between July 2014 and June 2018. Scans were independently interpreted in-house and off-hours by radiologists who were part of a non-ACGME-accredited fellowship and were reviewed by an attending radiologist within 10 hours of initial interpretation, with the fellow interpretations submitted as complete final reports. Attending radiologists were specialists in body imaging, while the initial interpreting radiologists were fellows training in breast imaging (12 fellows), musculoskeletal imaging (eight fellows), or body MR (12 fellows).

Forty-four of the 2,195 studies examined in the day had errors, compared to 240 of 7,895 nighttime studies. Body CT interpretations during the day had an error rate of 2%, while those during the night had a rate of 3%. Thirty-two radiologists in all evaluated off-hour scans. Of these, 22 had higher error rates for night cases (69%). Errors in the last half of the night assignment were 125 out of 3,358 cases (12 a.m. to 6:59 a.m.), compared to the 115 found in the first half (6 p.m. to 11:59 p.m.) which consisted of 4,537 cases.

You Must Be Logged In To Post A Comment