Consensus statement on networks for high-quality rural anesthesia, surgery, and obstetric care in Canada.

Objective: To describe the essential components of well-resourced and high-functioning multidisciplinary networks that support high-quality anesthesia, surgery, and maternity care for rural Canadians, delivered as close to home as possible.

Composition Of The Committee: A volunteer Writers' Group was drawn from the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, the Canadian Association of General Surgeons, the College of Family Physicians of Canada, and the Association of Canadian University Departments of Anesthesia.

Methods: A collaborative effort over the past several years among the professional stakeholders has culminated in this consensus statement on networked care designed to integrate and support a specialist and non-specialist, urban and rural, anesthesia, surgery, and maternity work force into high-functioning networks based on the best available evidence.

Joint position paper on rural surgery and operative delivery.

Our professional organizations have prepared this paper as part of an integrated, multidisciplinary plan to ensure the availability of well-trained practitioner teams to sustain safe, effective and high-quality rural surgical and operative delivery services. Without these robust local (or nearby) surgical services, sustaining rural maternity care is much more difficult. This paper describes the "network model" as a health human resources solution to meet the surgical needs, including operative delivery, of rural residents; outlines necessary policy directions for achieving this solution; and poses a series of enabling recommendations.

Transfer of care of postsurgical patients from hospital to the community setting: cross-sectional survey of primary care physicians.

Background: Postsurgical management is often delegated to family physicians once patients are discharged from hospital, but management of such patients may not be effectively communicated. We examined transfer of care of postsurgical patients by surveying family physicians.

Methods: An electronic, self-administered survey was administered from November 2012 to March 2014 to family physicians affiliated with 4 academic and community hospitals in Toronto, Canada.

Development of a checklist of safe discharge practices for hospital patients.

Background: Discharge from hospital can be a vulnerable period for patients. Multifaceted "discharge bundles" facilitate care transitions and possibly decrease adverse outcomes. We describe a structured approach to discharge planning, starting from admission and proceeding through discharge, using a standardized checklist of tasks to be performed for each hospitalization day.