Trainee Wellness and Safety in the Context of COVID-19: The Experience of One Institution.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant ramifications for provider well-being. During these unprecedented and challenging times, one institution's Department of Surgery put in place several important initiatives for promoting the well-being of trainees as they were redeployed to provide care to COVID-19 patients. In this article, the authors describe these initiatives, which fall into 3 broad categories: redeploying faculty and trainees, ensuring provider safety, and promoting trainee wellness. The redeployment initiatives are the following: reframing the team mindset, creating a culture of grace and forgiveness, establishing a multidisciplinary wellness committee, promoting centralized leadership, providing clear communication, coordinating between departments and programs, implementing phased restructuring of the department's services, establishing scheduling flexibility and redundancy, adhering to training regulations, designating a trainee ombudsperson, assessing physical health risks for high-risk individuals, and planning for structured deimplementation. Initiatives specific to promoting provider safety are appointing a trainee safety advocate, guaranteeing personal protective equipment and relevant information about these materials, providing guidance regarding safe practices at home, and offering alternative housing options when necessary. Finally, the initiatives put in place to directly promote trainee wellness are establishing an environment of psychological safety, providing mental health resources, maintaining the educational missions, solidifying a sense of community by showing appreciation, being attentive to childcare, and using social media to promote community morale. The initiatives to carry out the department's strategy presented in this article, which were well received by both faculty and trainee members of the authors' community, may be employed in other departments and even outside the context of COVID-19. The authors hope that colleagues at other institutions and departments, independent of specialty, will find the initiatives described here helpful during, and perhaps after, the pandemic as they develop their own institution-specific strategies to promote trainee wellness.

Model for End-Stage Liver Disease Score Independently Predicts Mortality in Cardiac Surgery.

BACKGROUND: Although liver disease increases surgical risk, it is not considered in The Society for Thoracic Surgeons (STS) risk calculator. This study assessed the impact of Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) on outcomes after cardiac surgical procedures and the additional predictive value of MELD in the STS risk model. METHODS: Deidentified records of 21,272 patients were extracted from a regional STS database. Inclusion criteria were any cardiac operation with a risk score available (2011-2016). Exclusion criteria included missing MELD (n = 2,895) or preoperative anticoagulation (n = 144). Patients were stratified into three categories, MELD < 9 (low), MELD 9 to 15 (moderate), and MELD > 15 (high). Univariate and multivariate logistic regression assessed risk-adjusted associations between MELD and operative outcomes. RESULTS: Increasing MELD scores were associated with greater comorbid disease, mitral operation, prior cardiac operation, and higher STS-predicted risk of mortality (1.1%, 2.3%, and 6.0% by MELD category; p < 0.0001). The operative mortality rate increased with increasing MELD score (1.6%, 3.9%, and 8.4%; p < 0.0001). By logistic regression MELD score was an independent predictor of operative mortality (odds ratio, 1.03 per MELD score point; p < 0.0001) as were the components total bilirubin (odds ratio, 1.22 per mg/dL; p = 0.002) and international normalized ratio (odds ratio, 1.40 per unit; p < 0.0001). Finally, MELD score was independently associated with STS major morbidity and the component complications renal failure and stroke. CONCLUSIONS: Increasing MELD score, international normalized ratio, and bilirubin all independently increase risk of operative mortality. Because high rates of missing data currently limit utilization of MELD, efforts to simplify and improve data collection would help improve future risk models.