Study finds best time to visit doctor is in the morning

The best time to visit a doctor is at 8am: Study

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A new study published by researchers in Philadelphia has found that doctors are more likely to order test screenings for their patients during the morning hours around 8am. Visiting a doctor later in the day, according to the study’s findings, decreases the chances of getting screened for sometimes life-threatening conditions.

The study involving researchers from John Hopkins University and the University of Pennsylvania, looked at 19,254 female patients who were eligible for breast or colorectal cancer screenings. Its research aim was to identify whether “decision fatigue” becomes a factor in medical screenings, which it defined as the “depletion of self-control and active initiative that results from the cumulative burden of decision making.”

Because doctors gain more and more work as their day progresses, they are less likely to order additional screening tests towards the end of their day. The study found the most breast cancer screening tests were ordered at 8am, while the lowest were at 11am and 5pm. Similar results were observed for colorectal cancer screenings, with highest rates at 8am and the lowest rates at 5pm.

Titled "Association of Primary Care Clinic Appointment Time With Clinician Ordering and Patient Completion of Breast and Colorectal Cancer Screening", the study mentions other results of decision fatigue observed in earlier trials. “These tendencies may lead to suboptimal care for patients with clinic appointment times later in the day. For example, in prior work we found that influenza vaccination rates began around 44% in the morning but then steadily decreased to 32% by the end of the day. These patterns have also been found to exist for other behaviors. Evidence indicates that later in the day, there are higher rates of inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions by PCPs, higher rates of opioid prescribing for back pain by PCPs, and lower rates of appropriate handwashing among clinicians during the end of hospital shifts.”

The study does not prove that doctors are less capable in the morning, as a range of factors influences the results — doctors may fall behind schedule as the day progresses and order tests for the next day, patients may refuse screenings toward the end of the day (the study did not account for “the downstream effect of whether the patient completes cancer screening based on clinic appointment”), and other factors may influence the likelihood of being screened.

The research sheds more light on the role that fatigue can play in diagnostics and healthcare. A similar study was presented in 2011 at the Forty-eighth Annual Meeting of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons, which suggested an association between the workload of a surgeon and the possibilities of complications emerging when they perform surgeries.

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