Purpose: Healthcare organizations strive to increase physician engagement and decrease attrition. However, little is known about which specific worklife areas may be targeted to improve physician engagement or retention, especially after stressful events such as a COVID19 surge. Our objective was to identify demographic characteristics and worklife areas most associated with increased physician engagement and decreased intent to leave in pediatric faculty.
Patients and methods: In September 2020, we conducted a cross-sectional survey of faculty at an academic, tertiary-care children's hospital. A convenience and voluntary sampling approach was used. The survey included demographics, Maslach Burnout Index-Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS) and the Areas of Worklife Survey (AWS). The MBI-HSS was used to measure faculty engagement. The AWS measures satisfaction with six worklife areas (workload, control, reward, fairness, community, values). We used bivariate analyses to examine relationships between worklife areas and engagement and between worklife areas and intent to leave. We included multivariate logistic regression models to examine worklife areas most associated with increased work engagement and decreased intent to leave.
Results: Our response rate was 41% (113/274 participants). In bivariate analysis, engaged faculty reported higher satisfaction in all worklife areas. In multivariate analyses, positive perceptions of workload (odds ratio (OR) 2.83; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.2-6.9), control (OR, 3.24; 95% CI 1.4-7.3), and community (OR, 6.07; 95% CI 1.9-18.7) were associated with engagement. Positive perceptions of values (OR, 0.07; 95% CI 0.02-0.32) and community (OR, 0.19; 95% CI 0.05-0.78) were negatively associated with intent to leave.
Conclusion: We found that positive perceptions of workload, control, and community were most associated with engagement. Alignment of values and increased sense of community were associated with decreased intent to leave. Our findings suggest specific worklife areas may be targeted to increase faculty engagement and retention.
Introduction: This obstetric surgery review is directed toward the common obstetrical surgeries (caesarean delivery, VBAC/TOLAC, operative vaginal delivery, placenta accreta spectrum) with evidence for quality and safety to allow for obstetrical outcome excellence.
Materials and methods: This focused scoping review has used a structured process for article identification and inclusion for each of the focused surgeries.
Results: The review results provide an obstetrical surgery (OS) overview for caesarean delivery, vaginal birth after caesarean delivery and/or trial of labor after caesarean delivery, operative vaginal delivery, placenta accreta spectrum; considerations for quality and safety variance due to non-clinical human factors; quality improvement (QI) tools; OS QI implementation cohorts; implementation considering certain barriers and solutions.
Conclusion: Administrative health care systems and obstetrical surgery care providers cannot afford, not to consider and implement, certain evidenced-based "bottom-up/top-down" processes for quality and safety, as the patients will demand the quality and the safety, but the lawyers should not have to enforce it.
Purpose: Team processes, such as reflexivity and participation, are critical for organizational sustainability, especially in high-reliability professions such as healthcare. However, little is known about health-related predictors of team processes. Basing our hypotheses on the Input-Process-Output (IPO) model, this study investigates the influence of perceived organizational commitment to mental health (OCMH) on healthcare workers' team reflexivity and participation via mental health-specific leadership (MHsL) and team autonomy.
Patients and methods: The study involved 82 participants (ie, physicians, nurses, healthcare assistants, healthcare technicians, and physiotherapists) working in the Medicine, Emergency, and Neurological Departments at a large public healthcare organization in Italy. Data was gathered at 2-time points, 14 months apart.
Results: The results suggest that healthcare workers' perception of their organization's support for mental health at T1 significantly impacts team participation at T2 through MHsL and team autonomy. Likewise, the indirect effect of OCMH through MHsL and team autonomy was also significant in the model predicting team reflexivity. However, in both models, no direct relationship of OCMH on the dependent variables was found.
Conclusion: The findings highlight the importance of a mental health-supportive environment and leadership to foster team autonomy and, subsequentially, team processes, which are fundamental for performance and patient care.
Osteoarthritis of the knee is common. Early sports trauma or cartilage defects are risk factors for osteoarthritis. If conservative treatment fails, partial or total joint replacement is often performed. A joint replacement aims to restore physiological biomechanics and the quality of life of affected patients. Total knee arthroplasty is one of the most performed surgeries in musculoskeletal medicine. Several developments have taken place over the last decades that have truly altered the way we look at knee arthroplasty today. Some of the fascinating aspects will be presented and discussed in the present narrative review.
Aim: Analysis of centralized efficiency improvement practices in Australian public health systems.
Introduction: Public health systems seek to maximize outcomes generated for resources used through efficiency improvement (EI) in response to funding and demand pressures. Despite this focus, evidence for EI approaches at the whole-of-system level is lacking in the literature. There is an urgent need for evidence-based approaches to centralized EI to address these pressures. This study aims to address this gap by answering the research question "How is EI conceptualized and managed by central public health system management entities in Australia?".
Material and methods: Document analysis was selected due to its suitability for systematically searching and appraising health system documentation, with this study following Altheide's approach focusing on whole-of-system strategic plan and management framework documents originating from Australian public health organizations.
Results: Conceptualization of efficiency varied substantially with no consistent definition identified, however common attributes included resource use, management, service and delivery. Forty-two of 43 documents contained approaches associated with improving efficiency at the whole of system level.
Discussion: While no comprehensive framework for centralized EI was evident, we identified nine core approaches which together characterize centralized EI. Together these approaches represent a comprehensive evidence-based approach to EI at the whole of system level.
Conclusion: The approaches to whole-of-system EI identified in this study are likely to be highly transferable across health systems internationally with approaches including strategic priority setting, incentivization, performance support, use of EI evidence, digital enablement and workforce capability development.
Background: In response to the growth of the world's senior population, an investigation of ethical leadership on LTCs is needed, in particular in the impact it may have on customer orientation and on seniors' well-being.
Objective: We propose a model to identify the relationship between ethical leadership in LTCs and caregivers' customer orientation, and its influence on satisfaction with the service, satisfaction with life, and the quality of the interaction between caregivers and seniors.
Sampling: We present a matched sample of 277 caregivers and 277 elderly Brazilians, workers and seniors' in LTCs in Brazil. The minimum sample size was 222, determined using G-Power software version 3.1.9.2, based on the desired statistical power parameters and the number of predictors. Two structured questionnaires were developed, one for caregivers and the other for the elderly. 69 LTCs were contacted and 29 participated in the survey (10 nonprofit, 34.48%). Data were treated statistically using SEM modelling.
Results: We identified a positive influence of ethical leadership on caregivers' attitudes, favoring their orientation towards the seniors'. A positive relationship between customer-oriented caregivers and customer satisfaction, life satisfaction, and the quality of the senior's interaction. A customer-oriented caregiver exerts a mediating effect between ethical leadership and the seniors' related outcomes, making ethical leadership beneficial to seniors and their family members.
Conclusion: Ethical leadership favors successful management of LTCs, increasing customer orientation, and provides clues to establish a better causality and a chain of effects between leadership and senior-related outcomes. Therefore, LTCs may be the appropriate outlet for the role of ethics in leadership.
Practical implications: This study provides managers with an understanding of the effects of ethical leadership in the context of LTCs, for both caregivers and seniors. The powerful effects of ethical leadership can be a stimulus to increase the role of ethics in LTCs, improving the quality of care, the well-being of the seniors, and, therefore, the human and financial performance of these institutions.