Anaesthesia
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Comprehensive peri-operative care for women with gynaecological malignancy is essential to ensure optimal clinical outcomes and maximise patient experience through the continuum of care. Implementation of peri-operative enhanced recovery pathways in gynaecological oncology have been repeatedly shown to improve postoperative recovery, decrease complications and reduce healthcare costs. With increasing emphasis being placed on patient-centred care in the current healthcare environment, incorporation of patient-reported outcome data collection and analysis within the enhanced recovery pathway as part of quality measurement is not only useful, but necessary. ⋯ The development process starts with detailing each step of the patient's journey in all five phases, then identifying stakeholder groups responsible for care at each of these phases and assembling a multidisciplinary team including: gynaecologists; anaesthetists; nurses; nutritionists; physical therapists; and others, to provide input into the institutional pathway. To practically integrate patient-reported outcomes into an enhanced recovery pathway, a validated measurement tool should be incorporated into the peri-operative workflow. The ideal tool should be concise to facilitate longitudinal assessments by the clinical staff.
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Over a decade ago, bibliometric analysis predicted the disappearance of UK publishing in anaesthesia by 2020. We repeated this analysis to assess if this had turned out to be the case, searching PubMed for papers associated with UK consultant anaesthetists for 2017-2019 across 15 journals. Although the rate of decline has flattened using the same search filter, including a wider range of publication types shows that outputs still remain at half 1990s levels (381 papers for all 3 years combined), authored by 769 anaesthetists, 274 of whom are associated with an academic centre. ⋯ The majority of papers (71%) are in secondary analysis (observational, database and association studies, surveys and meta-analyses), rather than in primary research (clinical trials or laboratory studies). These data reflect the current academic capacity in terms of publications, academic units and staffing. We discuss how this information can be used to inform a new strategy for UK academic anaesthesia.