Summer is generally the most dangerous time to go to the hospital. Summer is the most dangerous time to be a patient because new medical residents have to learn how to be doctors. A new study has confirmed the correlation between summer graduation time and medical malpractice rates. As medical residents graduate in the summer, hospitals lose staff with experience and gain new medical students who have yet to learn the in's and out's of patient care.

Every summer death rates increase and patient care efficiency rates decline at teaching hospitals in Pennsylvania and across the United States. Teaching hospitals train doctors, and patients are used as case studies to train medical residents on diagnostics and patient care. Medical residents spend between three and six years learning the ropes of the hospital.

During the summer, particularly July, the most experience medical residents graduate and less experienced medical residents are left to cover patient loads. In addition, a new class of inexperienced freshman medical residents begins to address patient care for the first time.

The new study confirms what the medical community has known already, the change in levels of experience increases medical error rates and surgical error rates. The changeover also decreases efficiency at teaching hospitals. The changeover and negative consequences is called the July Effect. The lack of experience new medical residents possess increases the prescription of wrong doses of medicine and also increases the number of duplicate or unnecessary tests.

The study found that death rates in training hospitals across the country increase between eight to 34 percent in July. To dull the July Effect, hospitals try to staff their halls with the most experienced physicians.

Source: healthland.time.com, "The July Effect: Why summer is the most dangerous time to go to the hospital," Alice Park, 7/12/11