What Are "Nonphysician Obligations" Anyway? A Survey Study Exploring Their Impact on Anesthesiology Resident Education and Developing a Conceptual Framework.

Background: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education defines "nonphysician obligations" as "duties performed by nursing and allied health professionals, transport services, or clerical staff." How anesthesiology trainees understand the concept of "nonphysician obligations" and are impacted by these obligations is incompletely understood. The objective of the study was to identify how anesthesiology trainees define "nonphysician obligations," which obligations impact trainee education, and what attitudes trainees hold.

Building compressed causal models of the world.

A given causal system can be represented in a variety of ways. How do agents determine which variables to include in their causal representations, and at what level of granularity? Using techniques from Bayesian networks, information theory, and decision theory, we develop a formal theory according to which causal representations reflect a trade-off between compression and informativeness, where the optimal trade-off depends on the decision-theoretic value of information for a given agent in a given context. This theory predicts that, all else being equal, agents prefer causal models that are as compressed as possible.

Systematic decision frameworks for the socially responsible use of precision medicine.

Deep learning techniques and whole-genome sequencing promise to increase well-being but also risk perpetuating psychological essentialism, potentially justifying inequality. In this Comment, we offer two much-needed systematic frameworks for clinicians and researchers to avoid essentialist inferences and unfair treatment: (1) a data-driven method for detecting causal fairness in precision health and (2) an ethical framework for determining when it is morally permissible to use racial classifications in population health research.

The Year in Electrophysiology: Selected Highlights From 2023.

This special article is a continuation of an annual series for the Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia, highlighting the latest developments in the field of electrophysiology, particularly concerning cardiac anesthesiologists. The selected topics in the specialty for 2023 include consensus statements on left atrial appendage closure, outcomes in patients with atrial fibrillation and heart failure after ablation, further developments in the field of pulse field ablation, alternate defibrillation strategies for refractory ventricular fibrillation, updates on conduction system pacing, new devices such as the Aurora EV system and AVEIR leadless pacemaker system, artificial intelligence and its use in electrocardiogram-based diagnosis and latest evidence regarding the impact of anesthetic techniques on patient outcomes undergoing electrophysiology procedures.