Evidence map›Paper›PMID 36920948›Full record

ArticlePloS one2023

Association of surgeons' gender with elective surgical lists in the State of Florida is explained by differences in mean operative caseloads.

Franklin Dexter, Richard H Epstein, Brenda G Fahy

Open access · goldFull text read
In one paragraph

Article in PloS one, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
3citing papers in PubMed
2.2field-weighted citation impact, top 13% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

3 citing papers in PubMed, 6 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.

Franklin DexterDivision of Management Consulting, Department of Anesthesia, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, United States of America.ORCID 0000-0001-5897-2484
Richard H EpsteinDepartment of Anesthesiology, Perioperative Medicine & Pain Management, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Miami, Florida.ORCID 0000-0001-8466-3845
Brenda G FahyDepartment of Anesthesiology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida.
University of Florida · USUniversity of Iowa · USUniversity of Miami · US

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundA recent publication reported that at three hospitals within one academic health system, female surgeons received less surgical block time than male surgeons, suggesting potential gender-based bias in operating room scheduling. We examined this observation's generalizability.

methodsOur cross-sectional retrospective cohort study of State of Florida administrative data included all 4,176,551 ambulatory procedural encounters and inpatient elective surgical cases performed January 2017 through December 2019 by 8875 surgeons (1830 female) at all 609 non-federal hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers. There were 1,509,190 lists of cases (i.e., combinations of the same surgeon, facility, and date). Logistic regression adjusted for covariables of decile of surgeon's quarterly cases, surgeon's specialty, quarter, and facility.

resultsSelecting randomly a male and a female surgeons' quarter, for 66% of selections, the male surgeon performed more cases (P < .0001). Without adjustment for quarterly caseloads, lists comprised one case for 44.2% of male and 54.6% of female surgeons (difference 10.4%, P < .0001). A similar result held for lists with one or two cases (difference 9.1%, P < .0001). However, incorporating quarterly operative caseloads, the direction of the observed difference between male and female surgeons was reversed both for case lists with one (-2.1%, P = .03) or one or two cases (-1.8%, P = .05).

conclusionsOur results confirm the aforementioned single university health system results but show that the differences between male and female surgeons in their lists were not due to systematic bias in operating room scheduling (e.g., completing three brief elective cases in a week on three different workdays) but in their total case numbers. The finding that surgeons performing lists comprising a single case were more often female than male provides a previously unrecognized reason why operating room managers should help facilitate the workload of surgeons performing only one case on operative (anesthesia) workdays.

Indexed as

SurgeonsCross-Sectional StudiesElective Surgical ProceduresFemaleFloridaHumansMaleOperating RoomsRetrospective Studies

Identifiers

PMID36920948
PMCPMC10016664
OpenAlexW4324309280

What OpenQuestion holds

Textfull text, public
LicenceCC BY
measurements read291
identifiers read9
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.