What Makes for Good Anesthesia Teaching by Faculty in the Operating Room? The Perspective of Anesthesiology Residents.

Background Teaching during patient care is an important competency for faculty. Little is known about anesthesiology resident preferences for teaching by anesthesiology faculty in the operating room (OR). If the behaviors and characteristics of anesthesia teaching in the OR that are most valued by residents were identified, faculty could incorporate that best practice to teach residents during OR cases. The objective of this phenomenological study was to interview anesthesiology residents to determine what they perceive the best faculty teachers are doing in the OR to educate residents. Methods Thirty randomly selected anesthesiology residents (10 in each post-graduate year class) were interviewed using a semi-structured approach with a predetermined question: "Based on your experiences as a resident, when you think about the best-attending teachers in the OR, what are the best-attending teachers doing in the OR to teach that other faculty maybe are not doing?" Interviews were recorded, transcribed, converted into codes, and grouped into themes derived from the cognitive apprenticeship framework, which includes content, teaching methods, sequencing, and social characteristics. Results Resident responses were separated into a total of 134 answers, with similar answers grouped into one of 27 different codes. The most commonly mentioned codes were: autonomy - step back and let resident work through (mentioned by 13 residents), reasoning - explain why attending does things (12), context - teach something relevant to the case (8), commitment - take time to teach (8), literature - bring relevant papers (8), prior knowledge - assess the baseline level (7), flexibility - be open to trying different approaches (7), focus on just a few learning points (6), reflection - ask resident questions (6), provide real-time feedback (6), teach back - ask residents to explain what they were taught in their own words (5), belonging - facilitate communication with the OR team (5), psychological safety - be open and approachable (5), equanimity - stay calm and collected (5), select proper timing for instruction when the resident is not occupied with patient care (5), visualization - use graphs or diagrams (5), and specify learning goals ahead of time (5). Conclusion The best practice for OR teaching, as perceived by anesthesia residents, includes social characteristics, such as context, commitment, psychological safety, equanimity, and proper timing, as well as teaching methods, such as autonomy, reasoning, literature, prior knowledge, flexibility, reflection, real-time feedback, and teach back. Further studies can determine if training anesthesiology faculty to incorporate these elements increases the caliber of daily teaching in the OR.

A model for estimation of the pulmonary capillary pressure.

To estimate the pulmonary capillary pressure, a theory was introduced by Holloway and coworkers. Based upon this, a mathematical model describing the measured data was developed. Because the physiologic data are embedded in noise and the pulmonary capillary pressure cannot be measured directly, we simulated an extensive series of data. The noise properties of the data were as analyzed to design a signal-processing tool, that cancels the noise from the measured data. The signal processing tool developed for the current application consists of pre-processing with a moving time average filter and post-processing with a neural network. After a verification procedure the tool can be applied to measured data, hence a more reliable measurement of the pulmonary capillary pressure is achieved.

[A method for sleep apnea monitoring]. / En metode til søvnapnø-monitorering.

In order to establish the diagnosis of the sleep apnoea syndrome (SAS) and to determine which form of the condition is involved, it is frequently necessary to perform monitoring of the patient's sleep during an entire night. This is frequently a difficult task as monitoring must be undertaken under the most natural conditions for the patient. On requests, our department has developed a monitoring module which is constructed around the equipment already present in the department and is directed by a personal computer programme which we have developed for the purpose. We are thus now able to undertake continuous monitoring of the physiological parametres of greatest interest and the monitoring is carried out so that the patient is disturbed as little as possible in the night's sleep. The data collected in this manner are traced in a coordinate system and provide a good review of the course of the night's sleep.