BACKGROUND Anesthesiologists have a higher rate of substance use disorders than other physicians, and their prognoses and advisability to return to anesthesiology practice after treatment remain controversial. Over the past 25 yr, physician health programs (PHPs), created under authority of state medical regulatory boards, have become primary resources for management and monitoring of physician...

FOR more than 2 decades after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Chinese-American relations were antagonistic. The Americans have a long history, before the establishment of the communist state, of bringing Western medicine to the Chinese. However, with the “doors” of China closed after the “red” revolution, American influence should have waned, yet three leading Chinese an...

Hemodynamic monitoring and optimization improve postoperative outcome during high-risk surgery. However, hemodynamic management practices among Chinese anesthesiologists are largely unknown. This study sought to evaluate the current intraoperative hemodynamic management practices for high-risk surgery patients in China. From September 2010 to November 2011, we surveyed anesthesiologists working...

Background Perioperative pain carries a considerable risk of becoming persistent; hence aggressive preventive approaches are advocated. Persistently high prevalence of postoperative pain, however, suggests anesthesiologists underuse these strategies. A prospective cross-sectional study of patients in the postanesthetic care unit (PACU) and a survey of anesthesiologists were thus conducted to ev...

BACKGROUND One of every 150 hospitalized patients experiences a lethal adverse event; nearly half of these events involves surgical patients. Although variations in surgeon performance and quality have been reported in the literature, less is known about the influence of anesthesiologists on outcomes after major surgery. Our goal of this study was to determine whether there is significant varia...

BACKGROUND Anesthesiologists and anesthesia residents are expected to acquire and maintain skills to manage a wide range of acute intraoperative anesthetic events. The purpose of this study was to determine whether an inventory of simulated intraoperative scenarios provided a reliable and valid measure of anesthesia residents' and anesthesiologists' skill. METHODS Twelve simulated acute intra...

BACKGROUND Anesthesia care has been provided by diverse health professionals worldwide, but little is known about anesthesiologists' views about this. Using a survey, we sought the opinions of a group of Brazilian anesthesiologists regarding nitrous oxide/oxygen and oral minimal/moderate sedation performed by dentists. METHODS A 3-part postal questionnaire was sent to 206 physician anesthesio...

Anesthesiologists care for patients of all ages, with all conceivable comorbidities, in every kind of health care facility. This leads to a significant challenge in the collection of data to describe the specialty, and in the development of evidence-based performance measures for anesthesiologists. Whereas narrowly defined medical specialties have developed registries based on manual abstractio...