Learning pathways composed of core subjects with features of reducing cognitive load have better learning outcomes.

BACKGROUND: Changing the course duration or timing of subjects in learning pathways would influence medical students' learning outcomes. Curriculum designers need to consider the strategy of reducing cognitive load and evaluate it continuously. Our institution underwent gradual curricular changes characterized by reducing cognitive load since 2000. Therefore, we wanted to explore the impact of this strategy on our previous cohorts. METHODS: This cohort study explored learning pathways across academic years of more than a decade since 2000. Eight hundred eighty-two medical students between 2006 to 2012 were included eventually. Learning outcomes included an average and individual scores of subjects in different stages. Core subjects were identified as those where changes in duration or timing would influence learning outcomes and constitute different learning pathways. We examined whether the promising learning pathway defined as the pathway with the most features of reducing cognitive load has higher learning outcomes than other learning pathways in the exploring dataset. The relationship between features and learning outcomes was validated by learning pathways selected in the remaining dataset. RESULTS: We found nine core subjects, constituting four different learning pathways. Two features of extended course duration and increased proximity between core subjects of basic science and clinical medicine were identified in the promising learning pathway 2012, which also had the highest learning outcomes. Other pathways had some of the features, and pathway 2006 without such features had the lowest learning outcomes. The relationship between higher learning outcomes and cognitive load-reducing features was validated by comparing learning outcomes in two pathways with and without similar features of the promising learning pathway. CONCLUSION: An approach to finding a promising learning pathway facilitating students' learning outcomes was validated. Curricular designers may implement similar design to explore the promising learning pathway while considering potential confounding factors, including students, medical educators, and learning design of the course.

A simple system change to reduce delays in emergency calls for assistance during anaesthesia in the operating theatre.

Promptly calling for assistance in an anaesthetic emergency is important. However, emergency call systems are not present in all locations where anaesthesia is administered, and in those that do have an emergency call system, the call button is often obscured by other equipment or in an unfamiliar location. Placing a red stripe from the ceiling, down the wall, to the emergency call button significantly reduces delays in activating an emergency call, demonstrating a simple but effective system change to the layout of operating theatres.

Medical Students' Self-Perceptions of Harassment During Clinical Placement.

Objectives: Exploring workplace dynamics during clinical placement is crucial to determine whether medical students are encountering safe and meaningful learning experiences. The aim of this original article is to describe medical students' reported harassment experiences whilst on clinical placement. Design: Medical students in years 4 to 6 were invited to participate in the survey. In this mixed-methods study, data collection included demographic information, responses to the Generalized Workplace Harassment Questionnaire, and qualitative commentaries. Results: Two hundred and five students completed the questionnaire. Medical students experienced harassment in areas of verbal aggression, disrespect, isolation/exclusion, threats/bribes, and physical aggression. Concerning levels of occurrence were noted for disrespect, isolation/exclusion, and verbal aggression. Conclusions: Many medical students in this study reported experiencing harassment during their clinical placements indicating that harassment during clinical placement continues to be of concern in medical education. The findings indicate that further initiatives need to be designed to identify and respond to these cases of workplace harassment and that power imbalance and safe reporting appear to be further issues of concern. It was evident that students need to feel safe enough to be able to report harassment experiences to allow managers and educators to address the full extent of the problem.

Psychology in the operating theatre: the importance of colour and cognition in the redesign of clinical systems for medication safety.

Medication errors in anaesthesia remain a leading cause of patient harm. Compared with conventional methods, use of the international colour-code standard on syringes and medication trays allows significantly more errors to be detected, and does so under conditions of cognitive load. Testing methods from experimental psychology provide important new insights for human factors research in anaesthesia and health care.

Teamwork matters: team situation awareness to build high-performing healthcare teams, a narrative review.

Healthcare today is the prerogative of teams rather than of individuals. In acute care domains such as anaesthesia, intensive care, and emergency medicine, the work is complex and fast-paced, and the team members are diverse and interdependent. Three decades of research into the behaviours of high-performing teams provides us with clear guidance on team training, demonstrating positive effects on patient safety and staff wellbeing. Here we consider team performance through the lens of situation awareness. Maintaining situation awareness is an absolute requirement for safe and effective patient management. Situation awareness is a dynamic process of perceiving cues in the environment, understanding what they mean, and predicting how the situation may evolve. In the context of acute clinical care, situation awareness can be improved if the whole team actively contributes to monitoring the environment, processing information, and planning next steps. In this narrative review, we explore the concept of situation awareness at the level of the team, the conditions required to maintain team situation awareness, and the relationship between team situation awareness, shared mental models, and team performance. Our ultimate goal is to help clinicians create the conditions required for high-functioning teams, and ultimately improve the safety of clinical care.

Interprofessional Learning in Multidisciplinary Healthcare Teams Is Associated With Reduced Patient Mortality: A Quantitative Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of the study is to identify quantitative evidence for the efficacy of interprofessional learning (IPL) to improve patient outcomes. METHODS: We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of quantitative patient outcomes after IPL in multidisciplinary healthcare teams reported in the Medline, Scopus, PsycInfo, Embase, and CINAHL databases. RESULTS: In 2022, we screened 15,248 reports to include 20 and extracted rates of mortality and primary outcomes in conventional care groups and intervention groups (involving initiatives to promote IPL in multidisciplinary teams). The meta-analysis of the 13 studies reporting mortality outcomes demonstrated that the 7166 patients in the intervention group had a significant 28% (95% confidence interval [CI], 40%-14%; P < 0.0003) reduced risk of dying compared with the 6809 patients in the conventional care group. The meta-analysis of the 14 studies reporting other treatment-related adverse outcomes demonstrated that the 4789 patients in the intervention group had a significant 23% (95% CI, 33%-12%; P < 0.0001) reduced risk of experiencing an adverse outcome during care compared with the 4129 patients in the conventional care group. Sensitivity analysis, involving the exclusion of the 20% of individual studies with the widest 95% CIs, confirmed the precision and reliability of our findings. CONCLUSIONS: We believe that our results are the first to demonstrate significant quantitative evidence for the efficacy of IPL to translate into changes in clinical practice and improved patient outcomes. Our results reinforce earlier qualitative work of the value of IPL, but further prospective quantitative and mixed-methods research is needed to better define such benefits.

Validation of the Generalized Workplace Harassment Questionnaire for Use with Medical Students.

The Generalized Workplace Harassment Questionnaire (GWHQ) has not been validated among medical students whilst they are on clinical placements. Therefore, this study aims to validate its use when applied to this cohort. A sample of 205 medical students in their clinical training phase completed the GWHQ. To examine the validity of the proposed factor structure of the validated 25-item GWHQ, which was reduced to from the original 29-item set, a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted. Model fit was appraised by evaluating the comparative fit index (CFI), the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), and the standardized root mean squared residual (SRMR). Spearman's rho correlation coefficients were applied to correlations between factors. With the exclusion of Item 19, the resulting fit was improved. In the revised model for a 24-item GWHQ, CFI = 0.995, RMSEA = 0.047, and SRMR = 0.115. Overall, the fit met the criteria for two fit indices and was thus deemed to be acceptable. Factor loadings ranged from 0.49 to 0.96. The Spearman's rho correlation coefficient between Verbal and Covert Hostility was high, although all correlations with Physical Hostility were weak. In conclusion, the amended 24-item version of the GWHQ is a valid instrument for appraising instances of harassment or hostility within clinical placements attended by medical students in New Zealand.

Systems, safety, and anaesthesia outside the operating room.

An increasing number of patients are receiving sedation or anaesthesia in locations outside of the operating room. Compared with the operating room, anaesthesia providers working in a non-operating room anaesthesia (NORA) location report significantly lower perceived levels of safety, and higher levels of anxiety, stress, and workload. These results are likely to affect the well-being of staff in NORA locations and are clinically relevant in terms of patient safety.

Anaesthesia and patient safety in the socio-technical operating theatre: a narrative review spanning a century.

We review the development of technology in anaesthesia over the course of the past century, from the invention of the Boyle apparatus to the modern anaesthetic workstation with artificial intelligence assistance. We define the operating theatre as a socio-technical system, being necessarily comprised of human and technological parts, the ongoing development of which has led to a reduction in mortality during anaesthesia by an order of four magnitudes over a century. The remarkable technological advances in anaesthesia have been accompanied by important paradigm shifts in the approach to patient safety, and we describe the inter-relationship between technology and the human work environment in the development of such paradigm shifts, including the systems approach and organisational resilience. A better understanding of emerging technological advances and their effects on patient safety will allow anaesthesia to continue to be a leader in both patient safety and in the design of equipment and workspaces.

Take action now to prevent medication errors: lessons from a fatal error involving an automated dispensing cabinet.

An error in the administration of an anaesthetic medication related to an automated dispensing cabinet resulted in a patient fatality and a highly publicised criminal prosecution of a healthcare worker, which concluded in 2022. Urgent action is required to re-engineer systems and workflows to prevent such errors. Exhortation, blame, and criminal prosecution are unlikely to advance the cause of patient safety.

Perceived barriers to the implementation of social distancing in the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran during 2020-2021: A cross-sectional study.

Background and Aims: This research has been on the effective role of social distancing in preventing the spread of COVID-19 and the obstacles to its implementation. The results of this research can highlight the major barriers to distancing and suggest appropriate solutions to remove them. Methods: We conducted this cross-sectional study during 2020-2021 among 277 faculty members, students of medical universities and ordinary people of Khuzestan province in southwestern Iran. We included them in this study by sampling at convenience. The data collection tool was a researcher-constructed questionnaire that we distributed among the statistical sample through social networks (WhatsApp and Telegram). Results: Mean ± SD = economic barriers 4.49 (0.65), cultural barriers 4.48 (0.70), social barriers 4.40 (0.61), political barriers 4.28 (0.64), educational barriers in universities and schools 4.27 (0.53) and Educational barriers at societal level 3.82 (1.08) were the self-reported obstacles (perceived) to social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic. Comparison of occupational groups with faculty members showed that only scores of academic barriers have a significant difference between occupational groups (p < 0.001). Conclusion: The role of economic barriers, cultural barriers and social barriers in social distancing was very prominent. One of our remarkable results was that there is adequate training for people on the proper implementation of the principles of social distance in the prevention of the Covid-19 pandemic. The responsibility of all members of society to observe social distancing as a moral and even legal duty can be the first step to protect the health of citizens against COVID-19. We can, therefore, use some planned interventions. This must be within the framework of economic, cultural, social and political structures of society.

Patient monitoring, wearable devices, and the healthcare information ecosystem.

Conventional patient vital signs monitoring fails to detect many signs of patient deterioration, including those in the critical postoperative period. Wearable monitors can allow continuous vital signs monitoring, send data wirelessly to the electronic healthcare record, and reduce the number of unplanned admissions to intensive care.

Quality improvement in New Zealand pediatric anesthesia: National quality direction, patient experience, equity, and collaboration.

The current priorities of the quality and safety of patient care in New Zealand at a central government level are described, with a focus on equity and patient experience. Priorities between stakeholders differ. We report the current quality activities of New Zealand pediatric anesthetists in relation to these governance aims, seeking gaps and suggesting future directions to align governance priorities and local activities. International relevance is also outlined. New Zealand Maori experience health inequity. Complex systemic factors including those of systemic racism and prejudice contribute to the inequity. The specific contributions to health inequity from pediatric anesthetists are unknown but could include aspects of cultural safety, delays in treatment and treatment deficits. Patient experience is correlated positively with other quality domains. Peri-operative patient experience tools require outcomes of interest that matter to patients, including relevant cultural safety domains. Risk identification and critical event review contribute to local learnings in departments and institutions, and more widely to national and binational (with Australia) learnings. Several collaborative projects in Australia and New Zealand, whilst not primarily quality improvement projects, may improve pediatric anesthesia. These collaborations include a pediatric anesthesia professional network, a curriculum for a pediatric anesthetic fellowship, contributions to a document on standards for pediatric anesthesia, and a national quality group researching key performance indicators across New Zealand.

Latent Safety Threats and Countermeasures in the Operating Theater: A National In Situ Simulation-Based Observational Study.

INTRODUCTION: In situ simulation provides a valuable opportunity to identify latent safety threats (LSTs) in real clinical environments. Using a national simulation program, we explored latent safety threats (LSTs) identified during in situ multidisciplinary simulation-based training in operating theaters in hospitals across New Zealand. METHOD: Surgical simulations lasting between 15 and 45 minutes each were run as part of a team training course delivered in 21 hospitals in New Zealand. After surgical in situ simulations, instructors used a template to record identified LSTs in a postcourse report. We analyzed these reports using the contributory factors framework from the London Protocol to categorize LSTs. RESULTS: Of 103 postcourse reports across 21 hospitals, 77 contained LSTs ranging across all factors in the London Protocol. Common threats included staff knowledge and skills in emergencies, team factors, factors related to task or technology, and work environment threats. Team factors were also commonly reported as protecting against adverse events, in particular, creating a shared mental model. Examples of actions taken to address threats included replacing or repairing faulty equipment, clarifying emergency processes, correcting written information, and staff training for clinical emergencies. CONCLUSIONS: The pervasiveness of LSTs suggests that our results have widespread relevance to surgical departments throughout New Zealand and elsewhere and that collective solutions would be valuable. In situ simulation is an effective mechanism both for identifying threats to patient safety and to prompt initiatives for improvement, supporting the use of in situ simulation in the quality improvement cycle in healthcare.

Medical Students' Quality of Life and Its Association with Harassment and Social Support.

OBJECTIVES: To explore the associations between self-reported quality of life (QoL) and harassment and the potential moderating effect of social support. DESIGN: Senior medical students were invited to participate in a survey consisting of a background section, the World Health Organisation QoL questionnaire (New Zealand version), a version of the generalised workplace harassment questionnaire, and the multidimensional scale of perceived social support. A series of multivariate statistical analyses were conducted. RESULTS: Two hundred and five students completed the online survey (response rate = 25%). The findings indicated a high incidence of verbal (90%) and covert harassment (87%), with relatively low levels of physical harassment (6%) and manipulation (6%). The correlational analyses indicated that low levels of QoL were associated with high levels of verbal and covert harassment and high levels of social support were directly associated with high levels of QoL. The moderation models indicated that social support conditionally influences the impact of verbal and covert harassment on social and psychological QoL. CONCLUSIONS: These findings imply that medical students experiencing harassment in clinical learning environments likely experienced lowered levels of QoL. Social support may moderate, in certain instances, the adverse impact of harassment on QoL.