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Moral injury in clinical and academic medicine—it is time to act

When doctors working within healthcare systems under pressure perpetrate, witness, or fail to prevent acts that contradict their own moral or ethical values and expectations, it can lead to moral distress or moral injury. This can result from active behaviour and from purposeful inactive behaviour. It is a growing and critical concern, representing significant distress that extends far beyond traditional concepts such as burnout. This article discusses moral injury in clinical and academic medicine and actively gives suggestions to prevent and address moral injury. 

Working together for perioperative excellence in pediatric perioperative research

Pediatric perioperative care can be described as a journey, starting when surgery is first contemplated, all the way through to a patient’s full recovery. For the child and their family, this journey spans from the time at home pre-operatively through a hospital stay and finishes with at-home recovery.

Perspectives of Children, Parents, and Healthcare Providers on Outcomes after Anesthesia for Surgery: An International Mixed Methods Stakeholder Engagement Study

The authors' international collaboration of researchers and clinicians was established to develop core outcome sets for infants, children, and adolescents. Here, the authors report on a qualitative mixed methods study with semistructured interviews of parents/guardians and their children undergoing anesthesia for surgery along with perioperative healthcare providers.

Core Outcome Sets for Pediatric Perioperative Research: An International Stakeholder Engagement Exercise and Consensus Report from the Pediatric Perioperative Outcomes Group

dentifying the outcomes that matter in clinical research is important, especially those that matter to patients and their parents/guardians. Consistency in outcome reporting enables meaningful assessments of interventions and facilitates comparison of results across trials. The aim of this study was to develop core outcome sets for pediatric perioperative research.

Enhancing Anesthesia Research: The Imperative of Consumer Engagement Into Clinical Research

Britta Regli-von Ungern-Sternberg AM FAHMS MD, PhD, DEAA, FANZA Chair of Paediatric anaesthesia, University of Western Australia; Consultant

Performance of published scoring tools for predicting the risk of perioperative respiratory adverse events in children - An evaluation in a large paediatric cohort

Perioperative respiratory adverse events (PRAE) are a main cause of morbidity and mortality in paediatric anaesthesia. Clinicians need to be able to predict their patients' risk of PRAE to plan their care. Clinical risk prediction tools have been developed to assist with pre-operative risk stratification; however, validation outside the contexts of their development is limited. In this study, we test the ability of common risk prediction tools to identify patients at high risk of PRAE in general anaesthesia.

Incidence of cognitive errors in difficult airway management: an inference human factors study from the Pediatric Difficult Intubation Registry

Cognitive errors are known contributors to poor decision-making in healthcare. However, their incidence and extent of their contribution to negative outcomes during difficult airway management are unknown. We aimed to identify cognitive errors during paediatric difficult airway management using data from the Pediatric Difficult Intubation (PeDI) registry, to determine patient and clinician factors associated with these errors, and their contribution to complications.

Pediatric Endotracheal Tube Cuff Management at Altitude: Implications for Aeromedical Retrieval and Other Austere Environments

Children are sometimes transported via fixed or rotary wing aircraft for medical care. If they are intubated with a cuffed endotracheal tube (ETT), changes in environmental pressure during transport can alter cuff pressure. Cuff management in this setting varies widely by region and by organization. In this historical review, we sought to delineate the evolution of ETT cuff management in children undergoing aeromedical retrieval in order to progress the field toward an optimum strategy in the future. 

Impact of honey on post-tonsillectomy pain in children (BEE PAIN FREE Trial): a multicentre, double-blind, randomised controlled trial*

Tonsillectomy, a common childhood surgery, is associated with difficult postoperative recovery. Previous reviews provided low-grade evidence that honey may improve recovery. The BEE PAIN FREE study investigated whether honey alongside multimodal analgesia improved the recovery trajectory in children following tonsillectomy.

Assessing the Use and Acceptability of Virtual Reality to Assist Coping in Children Undergoing Clinical Procedures

Virtual reality is used as a distraction tool during medical procedures that can cause anxiety and pain. We assessed the usefulness, engagement, value and feasibility of virtual reality to help children cope with routine clinical procedures.