Analysis of suspected impacts on the number of patients presenting to the ENT-emergency department of a university hospital: fact or fiction?

The number of patients presenting to the ENT-emergency department outside regular working hours varies strongly. Weather conditions, certain weekdays or holidays, public holidays or social events are often suspected as reasons for this variation. Some believe moon phases or which individual colleague is on duty has an effect. In order to verify these assumptions a retrospective analysis of patient occurrence in our emergency department was performed.

The documentation of 17.073 patients reporting to the emergency department from 2014 to 2016 during night shifts and on-call duties was analysed. Correlation analysis was performed regarding school holidays, religious holidays, social events, data from the German Meterological Service, moon phases and duty rosters.

The most frequented days were Saturdays (31,3 ± 7,6; mean ± standard deviation) and Sundays (25,9 ± 6,6). During the week, most patients were treated on Fridays (13,3 ± 4,1 vs. Monday to Thursday 8,5 ± 3,4; p < 0,01). Weekends were only surpassed by holidays (31,6 ± 8,3). Patient occurrence was neither influenced by regional nor national events, school holidays, weather conditions or full moons. The myth stating a quiet night shift was followed by a busy one could not be verified. No correlation was further found between busy night shifts and individual employees.

The present results supported our work scheduling. We expanded the established double contingent of two physicians on duty on Saturdays to holidays. Data analysis could further not support aforementioned suspected impacts on patient occurrence outside regular working hours.

Publication History

Publication Date:
18 April 2018 (online)