Emergency medicine journal : EMJ
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
Modelling attending physician productivity in the emergency department: a multicentre study.
Emergency physician productivity, often defined as new patients evaluated per hour, is essential to planning clinical operations. Prior research in this area considered this a static quantity; however, our group's study of resident physicians demonstrated significant decreases in hourly productivity throughout shifts. We now examine attending physicians' productivity to determine if it is also dynamic. ⋯ Physician productivity over a single shift follows a predictable pattern that decreases significantly on an hourly basis, even if there are new patients to be seen. Estimating productivity as a simple average substantially underestimates physicians' capacity early in a shift and overestimates it later. This pattern of productivity should be factored into hospitals' staffing plans, with shifts aligned to start with the greatest volumes of patient arrivals.