Fatigue amongst anaesthesiology and intensive care trainees in Europe: A matter of concern.

BACKGROUND: There is a growing awareness of the effects of fatigue on trainee wellbeing and health. Trainees in anaesthesiology and intensive care work long hours, switching work schedules frequently with insufficient rest. This may have unwanted long-term effects on mental and physical health and emotional well being, resulting in burnout and affecting patient safety. OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to evaluate the prevalence, severity, causes and effects of work-related fatigue in trainees in anaesthesiology and intensive care. DESIGN: Online survey of trainees in anaesthesiology and intensive care. SETTINGS: A total of 31 countries within Europe were included in the survey. PARTICIPANTS: European anaesthesiology and intensive care trainees who responded to an invitation to take part by electronic mail or through social media. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Responses from a 29-item online survey to assess the realities within European countries with regards to work-related fatigue. RESULTS: One thousand and two hundred trainees from 31 European countries answered the survey demonstrating that an alarming number of trainees were fatigued by their working patterns and night shifts. Trainees reported effects on personal well being, safe commuting and potential for clinical errors. Respondents described a lack of support from hospitals and management for recovery during and after night shifts. CONCLUSION: Fatigue among trainees in anaesthesiology and intensive care has a significant impact on their well being and potentially, on the incidence of clinical errors. Current measures from authorities and hospital management are not sufficient to prevent serious fatigue, and therefore a fatigue risk management system should be considered. Failure to address this issue might lead to a further decline in trainees' wellbeing, their capacity to work in the speciality in the future, and potentially increase patient care errors.

Fatigue and its impact on performance and health.

An increasing body of evidence suggests that fatigue among healthcare staff is widespread, owing to a combination of high work intensity, long daytime hours and night-shift working. This has been linked to poorer outcomes for patients and longer inpatient stays, and to increased risks of work-related accidents, errors and injuries for practitioners. These include needlestick injuries and motor vehicle accidents, and other impacts on practitioner health, ranging from cancer, mental health problems, metabolic disorders to coronary disease. Other 24-hour safety-critical industries have fatigue policies that acknowledge the risks of staff fatigue and provide a system to manage it and mitigate harm, but these are still lacking within healthcare. This review explains the basic physiology behind fatigue and outlines its impacts on healthcare practitioners' clinical practice and wellbeing. It proposes methods to minimise these effects for individuals, organisations and the wider UK health service.

Cerebral amyloid angiopathy, subcortical white matter disease and dementia: literature review and study in OPTIMA.

Cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) is of increasing clinical and research interest as the ability to detect it and its consequences by neuroimaging in living subjects has advanced. There is also increasing interest in understanding its possible role in the development of intracerebral hemorrhage, Alzheimer's disease (AD) and vascular dementia. In this article, the literature on this subject is reviewed and novel findings relating CAA to subcortical white matter damage in 224 subjects in the Oxford project to Investigate Memory and Ageing (OPTIMA) are reported. The relationship between CAA and subcortical tissue damage in the OPTIMA subjects was found to be critically dependent on ApoE genotype, there being a positive relationship between measures of CAA and subcortical small vessel disease in ApoEε4 carriers and a significant negative relationship in ApoEε2 carriers. These findings draw attention, as have many other studies, to the importance of ApoE genotype as a major risk factor not only for dementia but also for damage to blood vessels in the aging brain.