Getting things kicked off early for y’all, in part because I want to share the Septmber IGSJC article- we’ll have a discussion next week (9-10) and hope you’ll join us on Twitter.
September IGSJC article: This terrific piece from Raj Aggarwal and collaborators looking at learning curves in surgery. It applies across all levels of learner, so if you’re not involved in resident or student education don’t let that scare you off.
We’ve been doing work with NIS and NEDS on burns and soft-tissue things, so this use of NIS to look at outcomes after pancreatic debridement caught my eye.
I’ve been heard by more than one trainee to mutter, “Just because we can doesn’t mean we should” regarding care that is unlikely to benefit a patient. This piece from Critical Care Medicine shows the opportunity cost of “futile” care (not a fan of the word futile, but that’s a different issue for another day).
We’ve had a couple of different discussions about ileostomies and dehydration as a cause of post-surgical readmission in the last few weeks during our M&M conference. I suppose that’s why this assessment of preventable readmissions at another center caught my eye (note: authors have a related study in JAMASurgery this month about use of administrative data to capture readmissions).
Although my first love, demographically speaking, are our pediatric patients, many of you know I have a soft spot for our older patients as well. I’ve also been smitten with the concept of frailty since I first heard Tom Robinson discuss it at Western Surgical a few years ago, though applying frailty in acute injury and surgical illness remains a challenge. The group at Arizona provides a good step towards applying frailty in geriatric trauma outcomes with this manuscript.
Moment of shameless self-promotion: It’s officially out in print- the first of our pair of manuscripts on disruptive surgeon behavior. I am SO excited; to quote a dear mentor, this is work that I am incredibly passionate about since I do not believe that surgeon is a synonym for jerk. We’ve described it here, the next manuscripts describes the consequences/ impact, and from here…well, I’m working on the “fixing it” piece. That last bit will be in-progress for a while, so don’t hold your breath for it.
September Pleasure Reading:2013 Pulitzer Prize winner The Orphan Master’s Son. Deserving of the recognition.
September Pleasure Listening:It’s been 3 years since Ryan Adam’s last album. It’s been worth the wait- listen this week before it’s released, then go buy it!