Opinion: Don't get sick in July

From what I’ve experienced as a clinical nurse, whether or not the July Effect is statistically validated as a cause of fatal hospital errors, it is undeniably real in terms of adequacy and quality of care delivery. Any nurse who has worked in a teaching hospital is likely to have found July an especially difficult month because, returning to Dr. Young’s football metaphor, the first-year residents are calling the plays, but they have little real knowledge of the game. This experience deficit plays out in ways large and small, but I remember an especially fraught situation one July when a new resident simply did not know enough to do his job and a patient quite literally suffered as a result.