Note

that Table 3 shows an increase of age of patients over this same time period, which may be associated with higher patient morbidity. With respect to the patients admitted with bowel obstruction, the post-operative length of stay actually increased (Table 4). We do not have enough data on the bowel obstruction cohort to know how long these patients were managed conservatively, with medical treatment, before going on to surgery. It is possible that, by extending hospital stay pre-operatively, these patients are at a higher risk for developing post-op complications and hospital acquired infections. By not knowing what factors were present in the post-operative recovery period, for this group of patients, one can only speculate GSK2118436 chemical structure on why

post-operative length of stay was increased. selleck kinase inhibitor As well as assessing the clinical value of an ACS service on patient care, we were also interested in measuring the personal impact this service has with respect to surgeon satisfaction. In this study, our survey generated a 75% response rate from surgeons both at St. Paul’s Hospital (ACS) and the Royal University Hospital (non-ACS). This response rate is similar to a prior study by Helewa, et al. [6] from which our survey was adapted. Overall, we found that the surgeons at St. Paul’s Hospital, had higher average satisfaction with statements pertaining to the organization of their call schedule. The ACS surgeons still had low average satisfaction

with the amount of time they can spend with family, and their remuneration while on call. However, this was still assessed to be of a higher level of satisfaction, compared to the non-ACS surgeons. Introduction of an ACS service has not been without some drawbacks. One potential concern for ACS surgeons relates to the inherent unpredictability of working in this system. On any given day during the ACS week, the surgeon is not guaranteed to be booking surgical cases. This has economic consequences for surgeons who have less control over their income during the on-call week. Furthermore, our system includes only one dedicated operating room theater for emergency general surgery patients. Other services can book higher priority patients at the expense of general surgery cases. An obvious area of improvement, which is supported by the findings in our ADAMTS5 study, is the dedication of more than one operating room for acute general surgery patients. This will likely further improve time to surgery for patients. Overall, the satisfaction of surgeons in our service suggests that improvements in lifestyle and patient care outweigh potential concerns. Limitations Our study has a number of limitations. The patients in our post-ACS group had a significantly higher mean age than those in our pre-ACS group which may have influenced the length of stay, particularly for patients with bowel obstruction.