Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Excellence occurs when individuals from diverse backgrounds come together. With this conviction, our clinical, educational and research programs actively foster safe and supportive environments. Our residents, faculty and staff have participated in educational sessions on recognizing bias and microaggressions in health care. As part of the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, we closely monitor and implement its recommendations.
Led by Dr. Deborah Rusy, residents can participate in global anesthesia efforts (including clinical service, education and training and research) to support patients and providers in low- and middle-income countries. Simulation: Residents participate in simulation activities throughout their training. First-year simulations focus on procedural skills such as central line placement and advanced airway management. Clinical anesthesia sessions offer active training for crisis scenarios and rare anesthesia-related events and provide practice in difficult patient scenarios.
Faculty Development:
The UWDOA has an increasingly robust and growing structured career development process for newly appointed faculty in the three appointment and promotion tracks: Tenure, Clinical Health Sciences (CHS), and Clinician-Teacher (CT) (For more information and for promotion timelines, see overview-of-faculty-tracks/appointment-and-promotion). The UWDOA has a designated Vice-Chair for Faculty Development and Promotion and 2 Associate Vice-Chairs complemented by a promotion program manager and an administrative assistant who are readily available to assist faculty in career advancement. This program is complemented by resources that are available within the UW School of Medicine and Public Health (UWSMPH), which routinely provides educational courses such as Promotions 101 and 102, Fundamentals of Clinical Research and Trials, the Teaching academy program, and others [For details see (Faculty Affairs and Development Home page) (Faculty Affairs and Development Career Development Programs)] to optimize career maturation. The Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Promotion and their staff are also readily available for consultation.
A healthy planet leads to healthy people. That’s why the missions of both UW Health and the Department of Anesthesiology include a commitment to advancing health through social responsibility. In the past decade our department has enhanced the social, environmental and economic sustainability of our practice through waste reduction and education about climate-smart anesthesia practice.
Plans are underway for a new UW Health Pre-Operative Clinic to be led by the Department of Anesthesiology. Allowing us to expand our reach and better evaluate and prepare patients for surgery, this comprehensive pre-op clinic will result in both improved patient outcomes and increased patient and family satisfaction. The clinic will be directed by Dr. William Hartman, who brings his expertise and experience in augmenting pre-operative care systems.
We know that timely preparation of surgical patients decreases their risk of experiencing complications and decreases related costs of longer hospital stays and readmissions. The new clinic will dramatically increase the number of surgical patients we consult each year — from approximately 6,000 today to more than 22,000. Historically, our Preanesthesia surgical service (PASS) clinic nurses would perform chart reviews and screening phone calls to risk-stratify patients who were identified by surgical clinics as high-risk. In contrast, our new, comprehensive pre-op clinic will risk-stratify patients based on comorbidities and/or surgical risk and will allow for in-person and virtual patient consults.