Faculty Bibliography

The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly changed the way that health care providers interact with patients, particularly through the widespread implementation of telemedicine. Previous studies in other medical specialties have examined the role of telemedicine and physician satisfaction with the modality [1], but no such studies have been reported in the field of anesthesiology. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the scope of use and satisfaction with telemedicine among anesthesiologists who were ASA and ESAIC members. We developed a survey that was sent out to anesthesia providers through the European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care (ESAIC) and the American Society of Anesthesiology (ASA). The survey was open for the duration of 30 days, after which it was closed and no new responses could be generated. The survey comprised three major sections and examined, (1) the characteristics of the anesthesia providers, (2) the settings within which they were using telemedicine, and (3) their satisfaction with the experience. We performed analyses to determine if there was a significant difference in satisfaction for those who used telemedicine prior to COVID-19 compared to those who started using it during the pandemic. There were a total of 708 responses from various provider demographics. Satisfaction with developing patient rapport was higher than satisfaction with airway and physical exam. Providers who were using telemedicine before the pandemic had consistently higher rates of satisfaction across all the subcategories. Familiarity with the software could have played a role in this result. Overall, satisfaction among users was high and the majority of practitioners, 86.3%, plan to continue using telemedicine in their practice.
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BACKGROUND: The proposed 2015 United States Preventive Services Task Force guidelines recommend diabetes screening for individuals >/=45 years or demonstrating other risk factors for dysglycemia. Still, many patients with dysglycemia remain undiagnosed and opportunities for early intervention are lost. METHODS: To test novel approaches for diagnosis using a Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c ) test, we screened adult patients who were admitted to an observation unit from the emergency department with no known history of pre-diabetes or diabetes. RESULTS: Of 256 subjects, 9% were newly diagnosed with diabetes and 52% were newly diagnosed with pre-diabetes. Of those aged 18-29 years, 33% were newly diagnosed with dysglycemia, while 55% of those aged 30-44 years and 70% of those aged >/=45 years were newly diagnosed with dysglycemia. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that regardless of age, large proportions of patients in the emergency department observation unit have undiagnosed dysglycemia, an important finding given the large number of observation admissions