MEMO Study: Physician Stress and Error in Primary Care Across Three U.S. Regions

The Minimizing Error, maximizing Outcome (MEMO) Study is a longitudinal dataset investigating the impact of office working conditions on physician stress and error rates in primary care. It includes survey responses from 420 physicians predominantly from general and family medicine practices in New York, Chicago, and Wisconsin. The study was authored by Mark Linzer of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Use Cases

• Predicting physician stress levels based on organizational climate factors mentioned in the description
• Modeling the likelihood of future medical errors using the OSPRE self-assessment measure
• Analyzing correlations between chaotic office environments and reported burnout symptoms
• Studying the relationship between organizational climate domains and physician turnover intent

Strengths

• Includes longitudinal data from a multi-site study across three U.S. regions
• Based on 420 physician respondents, providing a substantive sample size
• Measures multiple constructs: organizational climate, stress, past errors, and future error likelihood

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count for the underlying dataset is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the three studied regions

Provenance

Source

Mark Linzer, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Collection Method

Physician surveys assessing office environment, organizational climate, stress, and self-reported errors.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified

Geography

Physicians and patients in New York, Chicago, and the state of Wisconsin (including Milwaukee and Madison)