Utilization of Orthopaedic Trauma Surgical Time: An Evaluation of Three Different Models at a Level I Pediatric Trauma Center.

Objective: Over the past decade, our institution has instituted three different scheduling models in an attempt to care for pediatric trauma at our Level I Trauma Center. This has been in response to a number of factors, including a limited number of physicians covering the call schedule, increasing competition for operating room (OR) time after hours (pediatric surgery, urology, neurosurgery), an attempt to fully utilize OR time during the daytime, fully staffed hours, and optimizing patients' timeliness to surgery. We examined the three on-call systems in place at our institution to determine whether a more flexible approach to pediatric trauma call resulted in delays in treatment.

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed patient records for three distinct 1-year periods with three different surgical call schedules: (i) a traditional call schedule in which the call physician was responsible for patients who presented to our emergency room; (ii) a half-day trauma block OR reserved the morning following call; and (iii) a full-day trauma block. Variables included date of injury, time of admission, admission diagnosis, cause of injury, and OR procedure and start time.

Results: We reviewed 951 cases over the entire study, 268 during the traditional call schedule, 282 during the half-call block and 401 over the time period of the full-day block. Mechanisms of injury were similar among the three groups, with falls and motor vehicle accidents being the leading causes. The average delay time was 17:40 for the traditional call group, 15:10 for the half-block call group, and 15:09 for the full-day block group. Our findings suggest that there was a high incidence of cases performed on weekdays after peak staffing hours with a traditional call model (59%). In contrast, half-day and full-day block models saw only 4% and 1% of the cases performed after peak staffing hours, respectively. There was a statistically significant difference in the number of patients admitted to the OR among the three groups (χ(2) = 488.8449, P < 0.0001). The number of patients seen during Monday through Friday was also statistically significant among the three groups (χ(2) = 382.0576, P < 0.0001).

Conclusions: The institution of more flexible and physician-directed half-call and full-day blocks did result in delays in treatment. However, it also has demonstrated benefits to patients in reducing the number of operative cases performed after weekday peak staffing hours; helped our institution better manage its staffing and financial resources; and provided the treating surgeon flexibility in determining the timing of operative care.