July Effect? |
Much has been written about the "July Effect", which is the purported association between worse patient outcomes and inexperienced new house staff in academic medical centers. A search of PubMed brings up 25 articles on the subject; some authors conclude there is a July effect, whereas others have not found an association. A recent study of kidney transplants is the latest study on this subject; in a retrospective analysis of >330,000 kidney transplant patients, graft and patient survival were actually better in July than in other months. One potential etiology for this is a more conservative donor selection, perhaps due to increased vigilance of the attending surgeons at the beginning of the academic year. Regardless of the literature on the subject, July vigilance is highly recommended.
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