LifeGuard to Launch Anesthesia Simulation Program

With physician burnout on the rise, today’s health care professionals are being expected to do more than ever before. The stress from the responsibilities they carry and the lifesaving situations they’re put in every day can take a toll on their performance at work.

At LifeGuard, a program of the Foundation of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, Director Marcia Lammando and Dr. Joseph Answine, an anesthesiologist at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, have teamed up to create a unique simulation for anesthesiologists – one that has the potential to be standardized and adapted for any specialty.

Instead of evaluating the physician’s knowledge base, this simulation evaluates response to stressors.

“The goal of this type of concept – basically a stress simulation – is to tease out certain deficits,” Answine said. “Then we can put them in a situation where they aren’t exposed to that type of stressor. Or hopefully correct it. The last thing we want would be for them to have to move out of that specialty or field.”

By placing physicians in these situations, the evaluators are able to gauge where a deficit may exist, and provide solutions to correct a problem before it arises with a real patient.

“If a physician feels they have experienced some level of burnout that has caused some sort of deficit – cognitive or physical – we put them through the stress simulation, not to make it punitive, but to find out where they have areas of deficit,” Answine said. “Then we can figure out the ways to provide support to allow them to move forward in their career.”

By putting physicians through these stressful situations, and learning how to remedy any negative effects, LifeGuard is putting patient safety first.

“As physicians, we’re in this game for one reason only,” Answine said. “At the end of our lives, it’s about how we took care of people and patients. That’s what this is about, too. We want to make sure that patients are safe. It is a simulation to make patients safer, and it is individualized based on previously observed deficits noted during neurocognitive testing or others' concerns.”

Lammando agrees. The ultimate goal is patient safety, while keeping the physician in mind as well.

“We are really trying to preserve physicians’ careers,” Lammando said. “And if something like this happens and it continues to get pushed aside, at some point it’s going to be a critical issue.”

Answine is confident that the stress simulation will have a positive effect on anesthesiologists and many other physicians in the future.

“We know very well that we can only get so close to real life,” he said. “But studies have shown over the years that simulation predicts real life outcomes. So it does work.”

A nationally recognized program, LifeGuard provides comprehensive assessment services and recommendations for remediation tailored to the individual needs of physicians and other eligible health care professionals. For more information, contact Director Marcia Lammando, RN, BSN, MHSA at info@LifeGuardProgram.com or call (717) 909-2590, or visit www.LifeGuardProgram.com.