Studies show that the night-time error rate in hospitals is higher.

Any friend or family member staying with a hospital patient should pay close attention between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., the time when errors are most common.

One limitation of this study which may be more significant for health care workers than others.

In the review of the 13 studies included, most  simulated workplaces. For anyone who works in a hospital, any simulation likely would be far less representative than the real workplace.

Bloomberg Businessweek

“Good news for javaholics: A new review suggests that caffeine consumption can help night-shift workers avoid making mistakes.

“At least 15 percent of workers in industrialized countries are thought to be engaged in shift work or permanent nighttime work, which can disrupt their body clocks. Some suffer from shift-work disorder, in which they only sleep for short periods of time and become sleepy on the job, boosting the risk of errors, the researchers explained.

“In the review, released online May 12 in The Cochrane Library, researchers looked at 13 studies into the effects of caffeine on shift-work performance. Most of the studies, however, only simulated the workplace.”

…”The reviewers found that caffeine appeared to do a better job of preventing errors than naps or the placebos, and also improved performance in areas such as memory, attention, perception and reasoning.”

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek, May 12, 2010

Source: Wiley-Blackwell, news release, May 12, 2010 (via Bloomberg Businessweek)