July The Deadliest Month For Hospitals?

Each year, thousands of medical students become doctors. However, instead of simply saving lives, the influx of recent graduates entering the workplace in July in may be the cause of rising death rates, according to a new study out of the University of California, San Diego.

..Deaths from medication errors increase by 10 percent during July, a so-called July effect as students graduate from medical school and enter residency programs.

Researchers examined more than 240,000 death certificates of people who died of complications from medication errors between 1979 and 2006, and found mortality rates consistently spiked in July, especially in counties with teaching hospitals.

While some, like Diane Pinakiewicz of the National Patient Safety Foundation, claim that the results make definitive sense, others, like Dr. Thomas Nasca of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, see them as somewhat overstated. In fact, some hospitals have found no increase in death rates during July.

CNN has more on the study: