I just finished reading a blog post titled “More Deaths for Babies Who Born on Weekends?” The author discussed a phenomenon that was new to me: the weekend effect. Apparently, there is a high correlation between babies born on weekends and infant mortality. While evidence was provided, I was still not convinced about this phenomenon. It made absolutely no logical sense! So, I decided to do some digging on my own.
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As it turns out, the Weekend Effect doesn’t just apply to birthdates. It actually applies to everyone who is treated in hospitals during the weekend. Studies show that people who are admitted to the hospital on the weekends might receive different care than the care given during a standard work week.
In 2014, researchers decided to “examine the association of mortality by day of the week for emergency and elective patients.” In a retrospective observational study, the researchers looked at data from 28 hospitals from Australia, USA, England and the Netherlands during 2009-2012. The participants of the study were emergency and surgical-elective patients. The outcomes were measured by in-hospital deaths within 30 days of hospital admission or elective surgery. After examining 2,982,570 hospital records, participants who were admitted to the hospital during the weekend saw more postoperative deaths than those admitted on a week day. While the mortality outcomes of the sample do vary within each country, the results support the Weekend Effect. However, despite the data, the researchers are not able to determine a reason for these results. Unfortunately, I was not able to find a p-value for this study. But, since such a large, random sample, I feel as though the results of this study are reliable. I am starting to become more convinced that the Weekend Effect is in fact, real.
Another study, published in The American Journal of Medicine, compared mortality rates between patients admitted to the hospital on weekends and weekdays. The researchers also wanted to know whether the weekend-weekday variation rates would differ between patients in non-teaching and teaching hospitals in California. The participants were all patients admitted to the emergency department of hospitals with any of 50 common diagnoses. This allows for variation, but also keeps the study stable. The study concluded that weekend-admitted patients had a slightly higher risk of mortality than did patients with weekday admission. However, the study did find that the weekend effect was much larger in big teaching hospitals than in non-teaching hospitals. Like the last study, I was unable to find a p-value. But, I think this study is reliable because of how it was conducted. The sample size was large and random. I also like how the study looked at the difference between teaching and non-teaching hospitals. At first, I was afraid that this study might suffer the Texas sharpshooter problem. However, I do not think that this is the case. The study only looked at two different things. I do not think that that is enough to be classified as a Texas sharpshooter study. I think that that might be a solid reason as to why the weekend effect exists.
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Prior to this research, I was confused and hesitant about the Weekend Effect. I now believe that it is a real thing. However, I think there is a very logical explanation for this. I feel as if the Weekend Effect is due to a flaw in human nature. For whatever reason, the weekend changes a human’s work ethic. I think that to really draw a concrete conclusion on this topic, psychological studies must be conducted. How does the behavior of a person change on the weekend? I think that posing questions like that will be able to bring us closer to a mechanism for the weekend effect. For now, there is no doubt that the Weekend Effect is real, however the reason for this still remains a mystery.
When I first read your introduction I had no idea how or why that would happen, but now it all makes sense. An article on CBS also included Fridays into the “Weekend Effect” and found that the risk of dying actually increased by 33% than if someone waited to have the surgery done on the following Monday (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hospital-death-risk-higher-on-weekend-in-several-countries-study-finds/). The problem with that study is that only a small number of hospitals were studied. It is still worth taking a look into the article. I found that most of the observations on mortality rates were made on scheduled surgeries and emergency room admittances, so does the weekend effect only apply to cesarean section births? Regardless, it is still very interesting to learn about this effect. Your blog will make me be sure to schedule any future surgeries on a weekday.
This is a really interesting article. A few days earlier, I heard a news that a study shows children who born on weekends are more likely to die than those who born on weekdays. I think this reveals a great problem. Is that possible to say there are more professional nurses and doctors stay in hospitals from Mondays to Fridays? Because it is important to have everybody there in a medical team. This is only a hypothesis, and researchers have to figure the reason out or this finding would absolutely panic the public.
I would propose that weekends are probably the busiest times for hospitals, leading to lesser care for those who really need it. With people partying too hard and being stupid in general, I’m sure hospitals have more patients on the weekends and this pressure on the staff is also a possible reason for the Weekend Effect.