Impacto del horario laboral en la capacidad de atención en médicos de urgencias de la Fundación Santa Fe

Abstract

Background The working hours produce a cognitive and functional deterioration in people, with obvious consequences on health services; it is one of the disciplines that has a higher risk of mistakes during its care processes. We intended to assess the impact of working time on the attention capacity in some emergency physicians. Methods A cross-sectional study was performed, using the Psychomotor Vigilance Test to assess the ability to care for people after performing different activities, measured by the response time in milliseconds. The population of study was the emergency medical personnel of Santa Fe de Bogota Foundation. benchmarked with themselves in different shifts. Results: The average response time at the start of the day shift was 436.6 ms (95 % CI 401-477), and at the end of the day was 443.1 ms (95 % CI 388-484).At night, work, the average initial response time was 422.8 ms (95 % CI 403-457), and at the end of the night shift was 467.44 ms (95 % CI 423-501). Discussion: There was significant differences in response time between the day shift and the night shift. Therefore we recommend creating state policies to manage the labor hours of health personnel to prime the safety and quality of patient care, avoiding any possibility of any medical error.