Peer Review in Perioperative Medicine

Abstract

Peer review is an assessment of performance by someone of the same status and ability as the reviewed individual. While peer review is a well-established practice in scientific medical publishing, its application is less well established as a component of clinical routine. While valued as a standard procedure in some medical systems, recognition of its benefits is only just emerging in others. Advances in management sciences together with the rise of a multicultural and multigenerational workforce, as well as ever-increasing patient safety and quality standards, are encouraging both the implementation and refinement of peer review in the perioperative setting. Quality of professional performances, compliance with organization strategy, and influence of personality traits are dimensions to be defined and included in peer review processes among acute care physicians. Management sciences offer guidance and provide a rationale for the inclusion of peer review processes. Peer review provides a process applicable to help developing individual as well as departmental performances in the face of ever-increasing complex workplace settings. Furthermore, peer review might be a key element in preventing, dealing with, and learning from catastrophic perioperative complications. With a solid peer review system in place, both individuals and departments involved in perioperative medicine benefit from an additional strategy to improve their effort in preventing, dealing with, and learning from catastrophic events.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

—Winston Churchill