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Morning conferences for anaesthesiologists - to be or not to be?
A Ludvigsson1, E Wernberg, A Pikwer
1Lund University, Department of Clinical Sciences Malmö, Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Skåne University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden.
Insights
Swedish anesthesiologists value daily morning conferences for information exchange and professional solidarity. These meetings are crucial for reporting on-call duties and discussing clinical and organizational matters, fostering collegiality.
Area of Science:
- Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine
- Medical Education
- Healthcare Management
Background:
- Morning conferences are a common practice in Swedish anesthesiology departments.
- Understanding physician attitudes and conference content is essential for optimizing their effectiveness.
Purpose of the Study:
- To clarify the content and physician attitudes towards morning conferences.
- To assess the structure and utilization of these conferences in anesthesiology and intensive care.
Main Methods:
- A prospective, cross-sectional study involving national surveys of department heads and questionnaires for anesthesiologists.
- Telephone interviews were conducted with physicians on night call to gather detailed feedback.
Main Results:
- High participation rates from departmental heads (80%) and physicians on call (92%).
- Key topics included night call reports, clinical discussions, staffing, and organizational issues.
- Daily conferences were favored for solidarity; 95% of on-call physicians felt they could report adequately.
Conclusions:
- Daily morning conferences facilitate vital information exchange and professional experience sharing.
- These conferences are highly valued by Swedish anesthesiologists for intercollegial solidarity and networking.
- Department-specific needs should guide any modifications to conference frequency or duration.
Background:
The main objectives of this study were to clarify the contents of and attitudes to morning conferences for physicians at Swedish departments of anaesthesiology and intensive care medicine.
Methods:
A prospective cross-sectional three-part study was carried out. Heads of departments responded to a national survey on the structure and content of morning conferences. A questionnaire on attitudes to and general contents of morning conferences was filled out by anaesthesiologists in the Scania region in southern Sweden. Furthermore, telephone interviews were made with anaesthesiologists on primary night call in the Scania region to obtain information on whether their needs to report had been met and on how the conferences had actually been carried out and attended by the physicians.
Results:
Information was obtained from 52 departmental heads (80%), 113 anaesthesiologists (53%), and 83 physicians on primary call (92%). Issues most frequently brought up were reports from physicians on night call, discussions of clinical matters, issues of staffing, and organizational matters. Daily morning conferences were strongly favoured for intercollegial solidarity and contacts, and were mainly and regularly used for reports from physicians on night call. At 95% of them, physicians on night call considered themselves to have been allowed to report what they wanted or needed to.
Conclusions:
Daily morning conferences enable regular exchange of information and professional experience, and are considered by Swedish anaesthesiologists to be most valuable for intercollegial solidarity and contacts. Before changes are being made in frequency or duration of morning conferences, their actual structure and content should be carefully evaluated and critically challenged to fit specific needs of that individual department.
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