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Impacts of doctors' experience on surgical outcomes

Category(s): Health
Status: Closed
Principal: Philip Leonard
Project Number: P0005
Year Approved: 2015
Year Completed: 2020

Project description

One of the justifications for closing smaller local hospital facilities in rural New Brunswick in favour of larger regional hospitals is that the quality of surgical outcomes may improve as doctors at larger hospitals perform higher volumes of a given surgery, thus becoming more experienced.

This study examines how patient outcomes vary with surgeon experience level. Is it the overall amount of experience (the total volume of total surgeries conducted) or the number of performances of a specific type of surgery that matters more for patient outcomes? Does the experience level of other doctors working at the same hospital have any impact?

Read the reports:

• Provider caseload-volume and short-term outcomes following colorectal surgeries in New Brunswick: Results from a provincial-level cohort study (2020)
• Provider volume and maternal complications after Caesarean section: Results from a population-based study (2020)
• Associations between provider and hospital volumes and postoperative mortality following total hip arthroplasty in New Brunswick: Results from a provincial-level cohort study (2018)

Knowledge transfer