JAMA surgery
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Previous work shows women who have children during surgical residency face difficulty balancing childbearing with training, which negatively affects residency and career satisfaction. Little is known about the factors that drive professional discontent. ⋯ Surgery residents who perceived stigma during pregnancy, did not have a formal institutional maternity leave policy, or altered their fellowship training plans because of challenges of childbearing expressed greater professional dissatisfaction. Mentorship in subspecialty selection and work-life integration, interventions to reduce workplace bias, and identification of obstacles to establishment of maternity leave policies are needed to enhance professional fulfillment for childbearing residents.
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Comparative Study
Laparoscopic vs Open Surgery for Colorectal Liver Metastases.
Surgery represents the mainstay treatment of colorectal liver metastases. Indications for the laparoscopic approach in this setting have been widened and there is a need to confirm the benefits of minimally invasive liver surgery (MILS) in patients with complex disease states. ⋯ In this study, the results of the propensity score matching analysis between modern laparoscopic surgery and previous open surgery appear to confer more comparable cohorts for complexity, further supporting the advantages of laparoscopy in the surgical treatment of liver metastases from colorectal cancer. The increase in use that laparoscopy has experienced appears to be based on increased feasibility, widening of eligibility criteria for patients, enhanced clinical effectiveness, and oncologic outcomes. All these elements together suggest that up to 70% of patients appear to be candidates for this minimally invasive surgical approach in high-volume centers.
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Reliance on prescription opioids for postprocedural analgesia has contributed to the opioid epidemic. With the implementation of electronic medical record (EMR) systems, there has been increasing use of computerized order entry systems for medication prescriptions, which is now more common than handwritten prescriptions. The EMR can autopopulate a default number of pills prescribed, and 1 potential method to alter prescriber behavior is to change the default number presented via the EMR system. ⋯ Lowering the default number of opioid pills prescribed in an EMR system is a simple, effective, cheap, and potentially scalable intervention to change prescriber behavior and decrease the amount of opioid medication prescribed after procedures.