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Emergency surgery workforce and its inverse relationship with multidimensional poverty in Colombia

European Journal of Trauma and Emergency Surgery Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

General surgeons, anesthesiologists, obstetricians and gynecologists (ob–gyns), and orthopedic surgeons are the vital disciplines to provide emergency surgery within a healthcare system. This paper aims to examine the relationship (if any) between multidimensional poverty (MDP) and GDP per-capita with the emergency surgery workforce density in Colombia.

Methods

We performed an ecological study, where the observation units were the 32 Colombian departments. The total numbers of general surgeons, anesthesiologists, ob–gyns, and orthopedic surgeons were obtained from the “Registro Unico Nacional de Talento Humano en Salud” (ReTHUS) registry. The 2020 population projections, the incidence of MDP and the GDP per capita were obtained from the Colombian National Administrative Department of Statistics. A spearman’s correlation coefficient was calculated to measure the strength of the correlations between the surgical workforce density with MDP and GDP per-capita.

Results

There were significant moderate inverse linear correlations between the incidence of multidimensional poverty and workforce density. The correlation coefficients for the incidence of multidimensional poverty and the workforce density were − 0.5273, − 0.5620, − 0.4704, and − 0.4612 for surgeons, anesthesiologists, ob–gyns, and orthopedic surgeons, respectively. Conversely, the correlation coefficients for the GDP per-capita and the workforce density were 0.4045, 0.3822, 0.4404, and 0.3742 for surgeons, anesthesiologists, ob–gyns, and orthopedic surgeons, respectively.

Conclusion

This study found that Colombian trauma and emergency surgery workforce density was inversely and directly correlated with multidimensional poverty and GDP per-capita levels, respectively. The relationship of these economic indicators with the surgical capacity deserves further investigation.

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Data availability

The data set used for this study was built from publicly available data and can become available by contacting the corresponding author.

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The author did not receive funding for this scientific report.

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Only authors who made substantive intellectual contributions were listed as authors. All authors contributed equally to this work. Al authors wrote the report, made critical revisions to the manuscript and approved the final version for submission.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ramiro Manzano-Nunez.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

This study reports the results of an ecological study which uses publicly available non-human data and do not require formal approval from an institutional review board.

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Manzano-Nunez, R., Sarmiento, C., Villegas-Vargas, S. et al. Emergency surgery workforce and its inverse relationship with multidimensional poverty in Colombia. Eur J Trauma Emerg Surg 48, 1159–1165 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00068-021-01690-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00068-021-01690-4

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