Anesthesiology's Practice Time Evaluation

• Conditions: Anesthesiologist's Tasks

• Registration Number: NCT03446482
• Lead Sponsor: University Hospital, Rouen

Brief Summary

The evolution of the health care system in Western countries has increased the scope of the tasks assigned to doctors in their daily lives. The burden of administrative tasks and the use of IT tools reduce the time spent with the patient. Indeed, in a very recent work published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Sinsky et al. showed that in 4 different specialties (general medicine, internal medicine, cardiology and orthopaedics) for every hour spent in front of a patient, each physician spent two hours on tasks in the absence of the patient1. This distribution of time was found in the Wenger et al. study in 36 internal medicine interns, since a ratio of 1:3 between the working time spent in the presence of the patient (1.7 hours) and that spent in front of a computer (5.2 hours) was noted2.

The reduction in the clinical time devoted directly to the patient is a major source of dissatisfaction for physicians, which can even extend to burnout3. Moreover, it has been shown that the importance of computer tasks in everyday life is correlated with the occurrence of burnout4. Finally, beyond these clinical times directly or indirectly linked to patient care, the time spent on other tasks (administrative, travel time between different sites,...) appears to be significant (20% in Sinsky et al.)1.

The anesthesiologist faces the same constraints as other specialties, but no work has been specifically concerned with the distribution of time spent on the different tasks. Compared to other specialties, anesthesiologist is also regularly confronted with specific organisational tasks within the operating room that could reduce the time spent directly with patients.

The objective of this work is to determine the division of the different tasks in a anesthesiologist's work day by analysing the time spent directly with the patient but also that allocated to his or her care outside of his or her presence, as well as that devoted to organizational or administrative tasks.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2018-01-01
• Study First Submitted: 2018-01-02
• Status Verified: 2018-02
• Study First Submitted QC: 2018-02-23
• Last Update Submitted: 2018-02-23
• Study First Posted: 2018-02-26
• Last Update Posted: 2018-02-26
• Primary Completion: 2018-12-31
• Study Completion: 2019-03-31

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: UNKNOWN
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 20

Inclusion Criteria

• Anesthesiologist performing his day's work in an anaesthesia context
• Day including only clinical activity

Exclusion Criteria

• Anesthesiologist isn't performing a day's work in an anaesthesia context
• Day not only includes clinical activity

Study & Design

• Study Type: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Design: Not specified

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
time (minutes) of anesthesiologist's presence with the patient during anesthesia in operating room	24 hours	Evaluation by an external observer (nurse student in research internship or clinical research technician) of the time in minutes of anesthesiologist's presence with patient in operating room

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Satisfaction of the anesthesiologist on his workday Number/h of task's interruption	3 days	satisfaction was measured with numeric scale between 0 and 10

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Rouen University Hospital; 🇫🇷 Rouen, France