When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

by Daniel H. Pink

doctors begin their jobs the “August killing season.”) For example, one study of more than twenty-five years of U.S. death certificates found that “in counties containing teaching hospitals, fatal medication errors spiked by 10% in July and in no other month. In contrast, there was no July spike in counties without teaching hospitals.”35 Other research in teaching hospitals found that patients in July and August had an 18 percent greater chance of surgery problems and a 41 percent greater chance of dying in surgery than patients did in April and May.36 However, in the last decade, teaching hospitals have worked to correct this. Instead of declaring bad beginnings an inevitable problem for an individual, they made it a preventable problem for a group. Now, at teaching hospitals like the one I visited at the University of Michigan, new residents begin their tenure by working as part of a team that includes seasoned nurses, physicians, and other professionals. By starting together, hospitals like this one have dramatically reduced the July effect.