Outpatient Surgery Magazine - Subscribers

Work-Life Balance - January 2017 - Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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8 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 7 I t's common for both surgeons and anesthe- siologists to supervise more than one case at a time, but the practices are suddenly under scrutiny. When a surgeon operates on more than one patient at a time, switching between cases while residents and fellows handle the more routine tasks, it's called simultaneous, concur- rent or overlapping surgery. "Double-booking" lets a hospital's top surgeons do more procedures and gives its sur- geons-in-waiting real-world experience. When anesthesiologists oversee 2, 3 or even 4 CRNAs at once, moni- toring the course of anesthesia administration at frequent intervals, it's called medical supervision. Jay Horowitz, CRNA, and John Dombrowski, MD, debate medical supervision's place in medicine in a point-counterpoint on page 6. Meanwhile, "double-booking" has come under national scrutiny after a Boston Globe exposé of problems related to overlapping cases at Massachusetts General Hospital (see "Has Double-Booking Surgery Gone Too Far?" at osmag.net/6zdapg). The U.S. Senate Finance Committee is looking to explicitly ban surgeons from divid- ing their attention between patients. The alleged problems are ghastly: surgeons failing to respond to emer- gency situations, not showing up at all or leaving anesthetized patients waiting. The practice has led to several malpractice suits involving Mass General. The Boston Globe reported that little scientific research has been done on concurrent surgeries, and that "there is no consensus Double Standard on Double-Booked Surgeries If anesthesiologists can supervise multiple ORs, why can't surgeons? Editor's Page Dan O'Connor

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