Incidence of extreme hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia in hospitalized patients during the month of July in teaching hospitals

INTRODUCTION: Blood glucose control has been found to be an important component in the care of hospitalized patients. Maintaining blood glucose within a target range using insulin intensively is a challenging task for physicians and requires skill and experience. We hypothesized that there may be more hyper- and hypoglycemia in July in teaching hospitals when new resident physicians begin their training. METHODS: We reviewed point-of-care blood glucose data from hospitalized patients at four community teaching hospitals for 2010. We defined severe hypoglycemia as blood glucose < 41 mg/dL and severe hyperglycemia as blood glucose > 399 mg/dL. Occurrence of hyper- and hypoglycemic events was assessed overall at the particular hospital globally and based on individual nursing units. Monthly occurrence rates were compared against the annual mean for that unit. RESULTS: The occurrence of hyper- and hypoglycemic events in July 2010 did not differ from the mean annual percentage of events at the applicable hospital. However, when the data were analyzed by the nursing unit, these extreme glucose events were significantly more common in 4 of the 11 units studied. Three of those four units were resident teaching units. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that there is some potential for increased risk of extreme hyper- and hypoglycemia at teaching hospitals in July, when new residents begin training.