Night, Weekend Births Have a Higher Risk of Delivery Complications

Women who deliver kids during night time, weekends and on holidays are more likely to face delivery complications, finds a new study.

Expecting mothers are more likely to suffer from delivery complications in hospitals during nights, weekends and holidays, reports a new study. The findings of the study are published in the journal Risk Analysis.

The study showed that the odds of a mother experiencing a delivery complication are 21.3 percent higher during night time.

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‘Maternal delivery complications are higher during the night, weekends and even on holidays. Hospitals could reduce the risk of harm to mothers by putting more emphasis on scheduling inexperienced practitioners with more senior health professionals.’
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A mother delivering a baby on the weekend is 8.6 percent more likely to encounter a complication than a mother delivering on a weekday, while the risk of delivery complications was found to increase by 29 percent on holidays.

Obstetric care in hospital settings is a team effort, and ineffective teamwork has been implicated in an estimated 75 percent of preventable medical errors, said Sammy Zahran, Associate Professor from the Colorado State University in the US.

"Across an ensemble of hospital situations where clinical quality is known to vary independently of patient characteristics and volume, we see the corresponding variation in the risk of preventable harm to expectant mothers," Zahran said.

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Hospitals could decrease the risk of harm to mothers by putting more emphasis on scheduling inexperienced physicians with more senior health professionals, the researchers suggested.

For the study, the team analyzed more than two million cases from Texas.

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