Deadliest month: As new doctors start in August, mortality rate in A&E departments rises by 6 per cent

Hospital mortality rates rise by 6 per cent on the first Wednesday in August - when newly qualified doctors come onto the wards (file picture)

If you're going to have an accident, you may want to avoid the first week of August. It is the most dangerous time to be admitted to accident and emergency, a study suggests.

Researchers found hospital mortality rates rise by 6 per cent on the first Wednesday in August.

Perhaps not coincidentally, that is also the day newly qualified doctors, fresh from medical school, are let loose on the wards of NHS hospitals.



Dr Paul Aylin, senior author of the study from the Dr Foster Unit at Imperial College London, said: 'We wanted to find out whether mortality rates changed on the first Wednesday in August, when junior doctors take up their new posts.

'What we have found looks like an interesting pattern and we would now like to look at this in more detail to find out what might be causing the increase.



'Our study does not mean that people should avoid going into hospital that week. This is a relatively small difference in mortality rates, and the numbers of excess deaths are very low.

'It's too early to say what might be causing it. It might simply be the result of differences between the patients who were admitted.'

The rise in deaths could, however, be caused by inexperienced junior doctors finding their feet - at a time when senior doctors are also more likely to be on holiday.

In the paper, the authors write: 'If this is due to the changeover of junior hospital staff, then this has potential implications not only for patient care, but for NHS management approaches to delivering safe care.'

The study, published in the journal PLoS, used data for almost 300,000 patients admitted as emergency patients to 175 English NHS trusts between 2000 and 2008 and compared the death rates on the first Wednesday of August with the previous Wednesday.

The researchers found 2,182 out of the 151,844 patients admitted on the last Wednesday of July died in the following seven days - compared with 2,227 out of the 147,897 who were admitted on the first Wednesday of August.

After taking into account differences in patients' age, sex and lifestyle, there was a 6 per cent increase in mortality rate.

The rise is statistically significant, which means it cannot just be explained by chance. The pattern also appears to be relatively consistent, the authors say.

But Patricia Hamilton, the NHS's director of medical education, said there was no evidence of a link between when junior doctors start and mortality rates.