The Flow of an Orthopedic Work Week

Dreading Friday night call? It’s for good reason, considering orthopedic trauma does not present in a linear fashion. In fact, after-hours surgeries peak from Thursday to Saturday, with Friday night seeing the highest number of procedures a 26.6% (p<0.001).

Pick a day other than Friday for elective cases

If your block day is Friday, you might have a little push back from your patients based on recent news they may be reading. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a study focusing on surgical outcomes, revealing that patients who underwent surgery on Fridays experienced, on average, more complications in the short-, medium-, and long-term compared to those who went under the knife after the weekend. This study analyzed data from more than 450,000 patients in Canada, and similar findings have been reported in studies from the UK and the Netherlands, highlighting a “Friday effect.”