Weekend Worriers

Clinicians strive to provide care to patients every day of the week. Doing so entails effort, and people who work in hospitals (unlike those in many other lines of work) are not always compensated for taking the weekend shift. Casual observations of hospital parking lots suggest that staffing shortfalls may prevail, indicating that the intensity of medical care on weekends does not match that provided on other days of the week.The shortfall of weekend medical care is important because the consequences of adverse events cannot always be offset by working harder on subsequent days. For example, treatment of myocardial . . .