When patients are scheduled for a surgery or medical procedure, the last thing on their mind is whether their doctor has had enough sleep the night before. However, a new study reports that the amount of sleep that the doctor had after finishing up the previous night’s procedures is related to whether complications occur in the following day’s procedure.

The impact of sleep deprivation and fatigue on resident doctors and nurses and their likelihood to commit errors has been well documented in research. However, somehow everyone assumed that senior doctors are a different breed of invincible human beings that can perform regardless of sleepiness or fatigue.

The new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that senior doctors are not that different after all. The study looked at “post-nighttime” procedures, i.e. those procedures that are performed by doctors (surgeons and obstetricians/gynecologists) during the day after that doctor had performed procedures the night before (between 12:00 am and 6:00 am). It defined a complication as a surgical site infection, bleeding, organ injury, wound failure, neural damage or fracture/dislocation.

When the doctors had the opportunity to sleep for six hours or more after their last procedure, their complication rate was only 3.4%. However, when the doctors had less than six hours to sleep between the last procedure and the current procedure, the complication rate jumped to 6.2%.

The take-home point is that doctors should give themselves enough recovery time after finishing a late-night procedure, including time to drive home, get six hours or more of sleep and drive back for the following days’ procedure. If not, then all what the patient can do is stop by a Starbucks, grab a Venti black coffee for their sleepy doctor, and hope for the best!