Key result
Surgery duration decreased with higher surgeon workload and with OR workload up to four surgeries per day, but increased when more than four surgeries were allocated to an OR.
Why the study?
Do non-clinical factors such as surgeon workload and operating room scheduling influence surgery duration in thoracic surgery?
Observational (n=2,196)
No
Do non-clinical factors such as surgeon workload and operating room scheduling influence surgery duration in thoracic surgery?
Non-clinical factors, such as surgeon workload and operating room scheduling, significantly impact surgery duration, highlighting the importance of operational decisions in healthcare efficiency.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
Workload patterns were associated with thoracic surgery duration; leaves open whether scheduling optimization improves efficiency.
BACKGROUND: Clinical factors influence surgery duration. This study also investigated non-clinical effects. METHODS: 22 months of data about thoracic operations in a large hospital in China were reviewed. Linear and nonlinear regression models were used to predict the duration of the operations. Interactions among predictors were also considered. RESULTS: Surgery duration decreased with the number of operations a surgeon performed in a day (P<0.001). Also, it was found that surgery duration decreased with the number of operations allocated to an OR as long as there were no more than four surgeries per day in the OR (P<0.001), but increased with the number of operations if it was more than four (P<0.01). The duration of surgery was affected by its position in a sequence of surgeries performed by a surgeon. In addition, surgeons exhibited different patterns of the effects of surgery type for surgeries in different positions in the day. CONCLUSIONS: Surgery duration was affected not only by clinical effects but also some non-clinical effects. Scheduling and allocation decisions significantly influenced surgery duration.
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Wang et al. (2017) conducted an observational in Thoracic surgery (n=2,196). Surgeon and operating room workload vs. Lower workload or different sequence positions was evaluated on Surgery duration (length of the third part of the operation) (p=<0.001). Surgery duration decreased with higher surgeon workload and with OR workload up to four surgeries per day, but increased when more than four surgeries were allocated to an OR.
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