Physicians prescribe fewer analgesics during night shifts than day shifts.

ABSTRACT: Adequate pain management is one of the biggest challenges of the modern healthcare system. Physician perception of patient subjective pain, which is crucial to pain management, is susceptible to a host of potential biases. Here we explore the timing of physicians' work as a previously unrecognized source of systematic bias in pain management. We hypothesized that during night shifts, sleep deprivation, fatigue, and stress would reduce physicians' empathy for others' pain, leading to underprescription of analgesics for patient pain relief. In study 1, 67 resident physicians, either following a night shift or not, performed empathy for pain assessment tasks and simulated patient scenarios in laboratory conditions. As predicted, following a night shift, physicians showed reduced empathy for p

SUBMITTER: Choshen-Hillel S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9271188 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature