The only downside of this approach is that patients often suffered from this on-the-job training—and July was the cruelest month. (In the UK, the month is later and the language more vivid. British physicians call the period when new 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.
