Predictors of healthy days at home: Benchmarking long-term outcomes in geriatric trauma.

Background: Quality benchmarking has recently evolved from a historical focus on short-term morbidity and mortality as the key metrics to assessing long-term outcomes. Long-term quality metrics have been shown to provide a more complete assessment of geriatric trauma care. Among these metrics, patients' average number of healthy days at home (HDAH) proports to be a useful administrative claims-based marker of patient functional status.

Going beyond compliance: A qualitative study of the practice of surgical safety checklist.

Background: The World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC) is a tool designed to enhance team communication and patient safety. When used properly, the SSC acts as a layer of defence against never events. In this study, we performed secondary qualitative analysis of operating theatres (OT) SSC observational notes to examine how the SSC was used after an intensive SSC re-implementation effort and drew on relevant theories to shed light on the observed patterns of behaviours.

Transforming Team Performance Through Reimplementation of the Surgical Safety Checklist.

Importance: Patient safety interventions, like the World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist, require effective implementation strategies to achieve meaningful results. Institutions with underperforming checklists require evidence-based guidance for reimplementing these practices to maximize their impact on patient safety.

Objective: To assess the ability of a comprehensive system of safety checklist reimplementation to change behavior, enhance safety culture, and improve outcomes for surgical patients.

CheckPOINT: a simple tool to measure Surgical Safety Checklist implementation fidelity.

Introduction: The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC) is a communication tool that improves teamwork and patient outcomes. SSC effectiveness is dependent on implementation fidelity. Administrative audits fail to capture most aspects of SSC implementation fidelity (ie, team communication and engagement).

Implementation of a New Surgeon Onboarding Program in an Academic-affiliated Community Hospital.

Best practices in onboarding are well-established, but surgeons frequently receive suboptimal introductions to new practice settings. At the same time, increasing regionalization of surgical programs and strategic alignments between academic and community hospitals have increased the demand for surgeons to practice at multiple sites with variable resources and institutional cultures. In response to this growing problem, we developed and implemented a surgeon onboarding program in an academic-affiliated community hospital.

Defining re-implementation.

Background: The first attempt to implement a new tool or practice does not always lead to the desired outcome. Re-implementation, which we define as the systematic process of reintroducing an intervention in the same environment, often with some degree of modification, offers another chance at implementation with the opportunity to address failures, modify, and ultimately achieve the desired outcomes. This article proposes a definition and taxonomy for re-implementation informed by case examples in the literature.

Disparities in the Operative Experience Between Female and Male General Surgery Residents: A Multi-institutional Study From the US ROPE Consortium.

Objective: To examine differences in resident operative experience between male and female general surgery residents.

Background: Despite increasing female representation in surgery, sex and gender disparities in residency experience continue to exist. The operative volume of male and female general surgery residents has not been compared on a multi-institutional level.

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Operative Experience Among General Surgery Residents: A Multi-Institutional Study from the US ROPE Consortium.

Objective: To determine the relationship between race/ethnicity and case volume among graduating surgical residents.

Background: Racial/ethnic minority individuals face barriers to entry and advancement in surgery; however, no large-scale investigations of the operative experience of racial/ethnic minority residents have been performed.

Methods: A multi-institutional retrospective analysis of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education case logs of categorical general surgery residents at 20 programs in the US Resident OPerative Experience Consortium database was performed.

Implementation of a Device Briefing Tool reduces interruptions in surgery: A nonrandomized controlled pilot trial.

Background: Interruptions in operative flow are known to increase team stress and errors in the operating room. Device-related interruptions are an increasing area of focus for surgical safety, but common safety processes such as the Surgical Safety Checklist do not adequately address surgical devices. We assessed the impact of the Device Briefing Tool, a communication instrument for surgical teams, on device-related interruptions in a large academic referral center in Singapore.

Trends in Surgeon Burnout in the US and Canada: Systematic Review and Meta-Regression Analysis.

Background: Burnout among surgeons is increasingly recognized as a crisis. However, little is known about changes in burnout prevalence over time. We evaluated temporal trends in burnout among surgeons and surgical trainees of all specialties in the US and Canada.

Creating a high-performance surgical safety checklist: A multimodal evaluation plan to reinvigorate the checklist.

Rationale, Aims, And Objectives: The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist is a communication tool designed to improve surgical safety processes and enhance teamwork. It has been widely adopted since its introduction over ten years ago. As surgical safety needs evolve, organizations should periodically review and update their checklists.

Utility of a Device Briefing Tool to Improve Surgical Safety.

Introduction: Clear communication around surgical device use is crucial to patient safety. We evaluated the utility of the Device Briefing Tool (DBT) as an adjunct to the Surgical Safety Checklist.

Methods: A nonrandomized, controlled pilot of the DBT was conducted with surgical teams at an academic referral center.

A multi-institutional study from the US ROPE Consortium examining factors associated with directly entering practice upon residency graduation.

Background: There is concern regarding the competency of today's general surgery graduates as a large proportion defer independent practice in favor of additional fellowship training. Little is known about the graduates who directly enter general surgery practice and if their operative experiences during residency differ from graduates who pursue fellowship.

Methods: Nineteen Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education-accredited general surgery programs from the US Resident OPerative Experience Consortium were included.

Gender and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Operative Volumes of Graduating General Surgery Residents.

Introduction: Gender disparities in resident operative experience have been described; however, their etiology is poorly understood, and racial/ethnic disparities have not been explored. This study investigated the relationship between gender, race/ethnicity, and surgery resident case volumes.

Materials And Methods: A retrospective analysis of graduating general surgery resident case logs (2010-2020) at an academic medical center was performed.

Disparities in uptake of cholecystectomy for idiopathic pancreatitis: A nationwide retrospective cohort study.

Background: The majority of cases of idiopathic acute pancreatitis (IAP) are thought to result from occult biliary disease. A growing body of evidence suggests that cholecystectomy for IAP reduces the risk of recurrence by up to two thirds. This study examined nationwide uptake and disparities in adoption of cholecystectomy for IAP.

Practice patterns after implementation of a selective spinal immobilization protocol in a regional trauma system.

Background: Universal spinal immobilization has been the standard of prehospital trauma care since the 1960s. Selective immobilization has been shown to be safe and effective for emergency medical services use, but it is unclear whether such protocols reduce unnecessary and potentially harmful immobilization practices. This study evaluated the impact of a selective spinal immobilization protocol on practice patterns in a regional trauma system.

Non-technical skills in surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic: An observational study.

Background: Non-technical skills are critical to surgical safety. We examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on non-technical skills of operating room (OR) teams in Singapore.

Materials And Methods: Observers rated live operations using the Oxford NOTECHS system.

Virtual non-technical skills assessment training is an effective, scalable approach for novice raters.

Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a creative transition to virtual platforms due to physical distancing and travel restrictions. We designed and tested a highly scalable virtual training curriculum for novice raters using the Oxford NOTECHS non-technical skills rating system.

Design: A three-day training course comprising virtual didactics, virtually facilitated simulations, and independent live observations was implemented.

We Asked the Experts: The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Recommendations for Content and Implementation Adaptations.

Background: As surgical systems are forced to adapt and respond to new challenges, so should the patient safety tools within those systems. We sought to determine how the WHO SSC might best be adapted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: 18 Panelists from five continents and multiple clinical specialties participated in a three-round modified Delphi technique to identify potential recommendations, assess agreement with proposed recommendations and address items not meeting consensus.

Massive intercostal hemorrhage after implantation of an intrapericardial ventricular assist device: A case report.

Left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) have become integral to the treatment of advanced heart failure. Surgical bleeding is a known complication of LVAD placement but is most associated with intraperitoneal pump locations. Here we describe a case of massive postoperative hemorrhage secondary to erosion of an intrapericardial LVAD into an intercostal artery with an associated rib fracture.