Building regional anesthesia capacity in limited-resource settings: a pilot study evaluating a 4-week curriculum

Building Anesthesia Capacity in the Developing World

Over two-thirds of the world's population do not have access to safe surgical and anesthetic care. Barriers to care include a lack of specialty trained personnel and unavailability of essential operating room resources. Aid efforts with the greatest impact focus on forming partnerships between high- and low-income communities, with the goal of creating self-sustaining programs run by local communities. Together these partnerships can work to build local capacity and expand the trained workforce by educating local providers.

Regional anesthesia global health collaborations- a scoping review of current intervention methods

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

Perioperative anesthesia-related mortality is significantly higher in low-resource compared to high-resource countries. Regional anesthesia techniques can provide safety, cost, and access benefits when compared to general anesthesia in these settings but is underutilized primarily due to a lack of experienced educators and training opportunities. Academic institutions and international organizations are attempting to fill this educational gap through collaborations, but these efforts need examination for best practices going forward.

RECENT FINDINGS

Most collaborative anesthesia interactions between high and low resource areas have occurred between North America or Europe, and Africa or Asia and a majority have involved an educational intervention. Only 7% of the studies used a recognized framework to evaluate the intervention used in their research, such as the Kirkpatrick, REAIM or CFIR method. All recent studies reviewed reported a positive impact from educational collaborations. Only 7% of interventions have had a primary focus on regional anesthesia and most were reported between 2016 and 2022.

SUMMARY

Robust reports on international collaborations providing capacity enhancing educational interventions in regional anesthesia have increased in recent years but are still rare and should be encouraged going forward. Short courses supported by high-resource countries can be effective in low-resource areas when partnerships produce curricula that are well designed.

Welcome to the 11th Volume of Pain Management

I would like to welcome our readers to volume 11 of Pain Management. Since the launch of the journal in 2011, the title has gone from strength to strength, and we are delighted to bring you a new year of content. We are starting off this issue with a look back on some of our article highlights from 2020, alongside some of this month's key content.