A study of anesthetic emergency work. I. The method of study and introduction to queuing theory.

Little information has been published on the staffing structures of anaesthetic departments, either for routine or emergency work. The routine work is normally predictable within certain limits, and time and appropriate staff can be allocated for it. Emergency calls on the personnel of anaesthetic departments, however, occur throughout the day and night and are very variable, both in occurrence and degree of urgency. In times of staff shortage routine work may be reduced at the expense of those patients on waiting lists but the emergency work load still remains. In a previous study (Nightingale and Taylor, 1966) the discrepancy between the total working time of anaesthetic junior staff and the time spent in operating theatres was explained as being due to emergency on-call duties. No attempt was made to evaluate the anaesthetic services offered or required. In fact, little has been written to define the whole range of interests and duties of anaesthetists. The authors feel that a good definition is that proposed to the United States Department of Labor (Dripps, 1966), which enumerates the obligations and responsibilities of anaesthetists as follows: