Anesthesia and analgesia
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Aug 2023
Comparative StudyRacial Disparities in Compensation Among US Anesthesiologists: Results of a National Survey of Anesthesiologists.
A racial compensation disparity among physicians across numerous specialties is well documented and persists after adjustment for age, sex, experience, work hours, productivity, academic rank, and practice structure. This study examined national survey data to determine whether there are racial differences in compensation among anesthesiologists in the United States. ⋯ Compensation for anesthesiologists showed a significant pay disparity associated with race and ethnicity even after adjusting for provider and practice characteristics. Our study raises concerns that processes, policies, or biases (either implicit or explicit) persist and may impact compensation for anesthesiologists from racial and ethnic minority populations. This disparity in compensation requires actionable solutions and calls for future studies that investigate contributing factors and to validate our findings given the low response rate.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Aug 2023
Burnout Among Chinese Anesthesiologists After the COVID-19 Pandemic Peak: A National Survey.
Evidence has shown that large-scale pandemics can have prolonged psychological impacts on health care professionals. The current study aimed to evaluate the prevalence of burnout after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic peak and to explore the prolonged impact of COVID-19 on burnout among Chinese anesthesiologists. ⋯ The impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on the psychological well-being of anesthesiologists still exists more than 1 year after the outbreak. Building better institutional support and cultivating stronger resilience may be helpful future intervention measures.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Aug 2023
Patients Undergoing Elective Inpatient Major Therapeutic Procedures in Florida Had No Significant Change in Hospital Mortality or Mortality-Related Comorbidities Between 2007 and 2019.
In a recent study, rapid response team implementation at 1 hospital was associated with only a 0.1% reduction in inpatient mortality from 2005 to 2018, characterized in the accompanying editorial as a "tepid" improvement. The editorialist postulated that an increase in the degree of illness of hospitalized patients might have masked a larger reduction that otherwise might have occurred. Impressions of greater patient acuity during the studied period might have been an artifact of efforts to document more comorbidities and complications, possibly facilitated by the change in diagnosis coding from the International Classification of Diseases , Ninth Revision ( ICD-9 ) to the Tenth Revision ( ICD-10 ). ⋯ Consistent with the previous study, there was at most a small decrease in the mortality rate over a 12-year period. We found no reliable evidence that patients undergoing elective inpatient surgical procedures were any sicker in 2019 than in 2007. There were substantively more comorbidities and complications documented over time, but this was unrelated to the change to ICD-10 coding.
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Relying on original, primary source documentation from the National Archives, we describe the practice of anesthesia in mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) units and the 171st Evacuation Hospital during the latter part of the Korean War in 1953. Values were scaled and reported as percentages. These Essential Technical Medical Data Sheets reveal a surprising proportion (12.9%) of men received spinal anesthetics, despite official recommendations to the contrary. ⋯ Utilizing primary source documentation, we found that general anesthesia was the most common type utilized. Newer techniques were not as commonly adopted, despite official recommendations and data from the time. The care provided closely resembled that delivered in the Second World War but inspired a series of technological and pedagogical reforms through the 1950s to improve military anesthesia for the next conflict.