N.S. experiments with rural ERs, letting doctors sleep overnight while working alone

A doctor at a rural ER usually sees every patient in person, day and night. But for three weeks this spring, two rural ERs were staffed by only one doctor on call 24 hours a day who remained on standby overnight to take phone calls from nurses, allowing the on-call doctors to stay at home in bed. Nova Scotia Health asked ambulance provider EHS to let its overnight emergency doctor assist by phone with non-urgent cases, while nurses call the doctor in for urgent matters and prescriptions. The overnight support was appreciated by both doctors who spent up to two weeks covering ERs alone. The system needs to be further studied to see if it's sustainable at a larger scale. In the U.K., a study found doctors and nurses should be allowed 20-minute power naps while working nights to avoid crashing while driving home. An expert is calling for fatigue risk management to become the norm in the NHS, as in the ariline industry.
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