High performance in surgery

The national identification of high performing providers in surgery is of prime importance to patients, surgeons and commissioners of healthcare. This thesis explores how high performance is identified, defined and measured nationally and attempts to identify the factors that underlie high performance in colorectal cancer surgery during the peri-operative period. An introduction into the determinants of high performance in surgery as well as defining quality as it pertains to surgery is then undertaken. Identification of available national data sources and metrics for national performance are then identified. Comparison is made between voluntary and compulsory reporting systems highlighting greater capture of peri-operative mortality in compulsory reporting datasets. A novel marker that reflects outcome following complication management is developed. This marker is based on re-operations and is derived from compulsory reporting datasets. The use of non-operative re-interventions is then assessed in oesophago-gastric cancer resections as proof of concept. An appraisal of all colorectal cancer units in England is then undertaken using a panel of metrics demonstrating that analysis on a single marker alone may be too simplistic. Identifying factors that pertain to high performance beyond those available from routinely available datasets using a novel methodological approach called HiPer (High Performance) is performed. The interview based methodology identified rich qualitative factors in a group of colorectal cancer units worldwide that may be causal in their performance status. Finally, results from the interview study were related to hard outcome data from each unit which demonstrated some correlation between the HiPer methodology and the outcome data in the final section of the feasibility study. The implications of this may be that a dual approach of analysing routinely collected data with a more qualitative HiPer style methodology may help us better understand how high performing units achieve their results.Open Acces

Measuring academic performance for healthcare researchers with the H index:which search tool should be used?

Objectives: To compare H index scores for healthcare researchers returned by Google Scholar, Web of Science and Scopus databases, and to assess whether a researcher’s age, country of institutional affiliation and physician status influences calculations. Subjects and Methods: One hundred and ninety-five Nobel laureates in Physiology and Medicine from 1901 to 2009 were considered. Year of first and last publications, total publications and citation counts, and the H index for each laureate were calculated from each database. Cronbach’s alpha statistics was used to measure the reliability of H index scores between the databases. Laureate characteristic influence on the H index was analysed using linear regression. Results: There was no concordance between the databases when considering the number of publications and citations count per laureate. The H index was the most reliably calculated bibliometric across the three databases (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.900). All databases returned significantly higher H index scores for younger laureates (p < 0.0001). Google Scholar and Web of Science returned significantly higher H index for physician laureates (p = 0.025 and p = 0.029, respectively). Country of institutional affiliation did not influence the H index in any database. Conclusion: The H index appeared to be the most consistently calculated bibliometric between the databases for Nobel laureates in Physiology and Medicine. Researcher-specific characteristics constituted an important component of objective research assessment. The findings of this study call to question the choice of current and future academic performance databases