JAMA surgery
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Establishing strategies to minimize the burden of burnout and poor quality of life (QOL) on surgeons relies on a thorough understanding of QOL and burnout among the various surgical specialties. ⋯ Burnout and QOL vary across all surgical specialties. Whether sex affects burnout rates remains unclear. Residents are at an increased risk for burnout and more likely to report a poor QOL than attending surgeons.
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Establishing strategies to minimize the burden of burnout and poor quality of life (QOL) on surgeons relies on a thorough understanding of QOL and burnout among the various surgical specialties. ⋯ Burnout and QOL vary across all surgical specialties. Whether sex affects burnout rates remains unclear. Residents are at an increased risk for burnout and more likely to report a poor QOL than attending surgeons.
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Inpatient palliative care improves symptom management and patient satisfaction with care and reduces hospital costs in seriously ill patients. However, the role of palliative care in the treatment of patients undergoing surgery (surgical patients) remains poorly defined. ⋯ The sparse evidence regarding interventions to introduce or improve palliative care for surgical patients is further limited by methodologic flaws. Rigorous evaluations of standardized palliative care interventions measuring meaningful patient outcomes are needed.
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Inpatient palliative care improves symptom management and patient satisfaction with care and reduces hospital costs in seriously ill patients. However, the role of palliative care in the treatment of patients undergoing surgery (surgical patients) remains poorly defined. ⋯ The sparse evidence regarding interventions to introduce or improve palliative care for surgical patients is further limited by methodologic flaws. Rigorous evaluations of standardized palliative care interventions measuring meaningful patient outcomes are needed.
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Serious, preventable surgical events, termed never events, continue to occur despite considerable patient safety efforts. ⋯ Current estimates for wrong-site surgery and retained surgical items are 1 event per 100,000 and 1 event per 10,000 procedures, respectively, but the precision is uncertain, and the per-procedure prevalence of surgical fires is not known. Root-cause analyses suggest the need for improved communication. Despite promising approaches and global Universal Protocol evaluations, empirical evidence for interventions is limited.