Assuring the Groundwork for Success: Mentorship, Sponsorship, and Allyship for Practicing Anesthesiologists.

The challenges facing the health care industry in the post-coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic world are numerous, jeopardizing wellness, and performance. Maintaining engagement and fulfillment of anesthesiologists in their work is now a critical issue in various practice settings: academic, private practice, and corporate medicine. In this article, we offer insights on how mentorship, sponsorship, and allyship are important in the advancement of the anesthesiology workforce including women and underrepresented minorities inclusive of race, gender, and disability. Mentorship, sponsorship, and allyship require a framework that intentionally addresses the programmatic structures needed to optimize the environment for increasing women, underrepresented minorities, and other diverse groups. These 3 distinct yet interrelated concepts are defined with a discussion on the value of implementation. In addition, the concept of "belonging" and its importance in enhancing the culture in anesthesiology is explored. We believe that part of the solution to wellness, recruitment and retention and improved job satisfaction of clinicians is having an environment where mentorship, sponsorship, and allyship are foundational.

Meaningful Learning Moments on a Family Medicine Clerkship: When Students Are Patient Centered.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Reflection after patient encounters is an important aspect of clinical learning. After our medical school instituted a reflection paper assignment for all clerkships, we wanted to learn about the types of encounters that students found meaningful on a family medicine clerkship and how they impacted students' learning. METHODS: Family and Community Medicine Clerkship students completed a reflection paper after the clerkship, based on guidelines that were used for all clerkship reflection papers at our medical school. Two reviewers independently organized student responses into themes and then jointly prioritized common themes and negotiated any initial differences into other themes. RESULTS: A total of 272 reflection papers describing an actual learning moment in patient care were submitted during the study period of January 2011--December 2012. In describing actions performed, students most frequently wrote about aspects of patient-centered care such as listening to the patient, carefully assessing the patient's condition, or giving a detailed explanation to the patient. In describing effects of those actions, students wrote about what they learned about the patient-physician interaction, the trust that patients demonstrated in them, the approval they gained from their preceptors, and the benefits they saw from their actions. CONCLUSIONS: An important contribution of a family medicine clerkship is the opportunity for students to further their skills in patient-centered care and realize the outcomes of providing that type of care.

An evidence-based review of the treatment of peritonsillar abscess.

OBJECTIVE: Peritonsillar abscess (PTA) is commonly seen but still controversial. We performed an evidence-based review to answer 3 questions: Are steroids beneficial? Which is the best technique for acute surgical management? When is tonsillectomy indicated? STUDY DESIGN: We performed a MEDLINE search of the published literature using appropriate search terms to identify pertinent articles, which were reviewed and graded according to the evidence quality. RESULTS: Forty-two articles were analyzed. There are no published studies on steroids in PTA. There were 5 level I clinical studies on surgical technique, which indicated that needle aspiration, incision and drainage, and quinsy tonsillectomy are all effective for initial management. The overall PTA recurrence rate is 10% to 15%. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, grade C evidence indicates that several methods of initial surgical drainage are equally effective, and the recurrence rate is low. The literature does not specifically address different treatments for children and adults.