BACKGROUND:The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected the personal and professional lives of all health care workers. Anesthesiologists frequently perform virusaerosolizing procedures (eg, intubation and extubation) that place them at increased risk of infection. We sought to determine how the initial COVID-19 outbreak affected members of the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia (SPA) on both personal and professional levels. Specifically, we examined the potential effects of gender and age on personal stress, burnout, sleep deprivation, anxiety, depression, assessed job satisfaction, and explored financial impact. METHODS: After receiving approval from the SPA Committees for Research and Quality and Safety and the Colorado Multiple Institutional Review Board, we e-mailed a questionnaire to all 3245 SPA members. The survey included 22 questions related to well-being and 13 questions related to effects of COVID-19 on current and future practice, finances, retirement planning, academic time and productivity, and clinical and home responsibilities. To address low initial response rates and quantify nonresponse bias, we sent a shortened follow-up survey to a randomly selected subsample (n = 100) of SPA members who did not respond to the initial survey. Response differences between the 2 cohorts were determined. RESULTS: A total of 561 (17%) members responded to the initial questionnaire. Because of COVID-19, 21.7% of respondents said they would change their clinical responsibilities, and 10.6% would decrease their professional working time. Women were more likely than men to anticipate a future COVID-19-related job change (odds ratio [OR] = 1.92, 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.12-2.63; P = .011), perhaps because of increased home responsibilities (OR = 2.63, 95% CI, 1.74-4.00; P < .001). Additionally, 14.2% of respondents planned to retire early, and 11.9% planned to retire later. Women and non-White respondents had higher likelihoods of burnout on univariate analysis (OR = 1.75, 95% CI, 1.06-2.94, P = .026 and OR = 1.82, 95% CI, 1.08-3.04, P = .017, respectively), and 25.1% of all respondents felt socially isolated. In addition, both changes in retirement planning and future occupational planning were strongly associated with total job satisfaction scores (both P < .001). CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the personal and professional lives of pediatric anesthesiologists, albeit not equally, as women and non-Whites have been disproportionately impacted. The pandemic has significantly affected personal finances, home responsibilities, and retirement planning; reduced clinical and academic practice time and responsibilities; and increased feelings of social isolation, stress, burnout, and depression/ anxiety.

Research has shown that women have leadership ability equal to or better than that of their male counterparts, yet proportionally fewer women than men achieve leadership positions and promotion in medicine. The Women’s Empowerment and Leadership Initiative (WELI) was founded within the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia (SPA) in 2018 as a multidimensional program to help address the significant career development, leadership, and promotion gender gap between men and women in anesthesiology. Herein, we describe WELI’s development and implementation with an early assessment of effectiveness at 2 years. Members received an anonymous, voluntary survey by e-mail to assess whether they believed WELI was beneficial in several broad domains: career development, networking, project implementation and completion, goal setting, mentorship, well-being, and promotion and leadership. The response rate was 60.5% (92 of 152). The majority ranked several aspects of WELI to be very or extremely valuable, including the protégé-advisor dyads, workshops, nomination to join WELI, and virtual facilitated networking. For most members, WELI helped to improve optimism about their professional future. Most also reported that WELI somewhat or absolutely contributed to project improvement or completion, finding new collaborators, and obtaining invitations to be visiting speakers. Among those who applied for promotion or leadership positions, 51% found WELI to be somewhat or absolutely valuable to their application process, and 42% found the same in applying for leadership positions. Qualitative analysis of free-text survey responses identified 5 main themes: (1) feelings of empowerment and confidence, (2) acquisition of new skills in mentoring, coaching, career development, and project implementation, (3) clarification and focus on goal setting, (4) creating meaningful connections through networking, and (5) challenges from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the inability to sustain the advisor-protégé connection. We conclude that after 2 years, the WELI program has successfully supported career development for the majority of protégés and advisors. Continued assessment of whether WELI can meaningfully contribute to attainment of promotion and leadership positions will require study across a longer period. WELI could serve as a programmatic example to support women’s career development in other subspecialties.

Background: The Women's Empowerment and Leadership Initiative in the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia was established to support women's efforts to achieve promotion, leadership positions, and equity in pediatric anesthesiology through coaching, mentoring, sponsorship, and networking. Career advancement relies on the establishment of mentoring relationships within institutions and at regional and national levels. Prior to the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic, networking was primarily conducted at large national meetings. Aims: When national meetings were canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Women's Empowerment and Leadership Initiative sought to reduce networking barriers by creating a pilot program called "Grow and Advance through Intentional Networking" (GAIN). Materials & Methods: Monthly 1-h virtual GAIN sessions were developed based on topics requested by the Women's Empowerment and Leadership Initiative members. Faculty facilitated psychologically safe small-group discussions to maximize engagement. Results:We present an overview of our pilot GAIN program, which has been well received by the Women's Empowerment and Leadership Initiative members and met with continuous demand for more sessions.Discussion: Professional networking is critical for career advancement and for developing and maintaining a sense of community and well-being. Early-and mid-career physicians depend on these relationships to facilitate academic productivity and promotion. Conclusion:Programs like the Women's Empowerment and Leadership Initiative GAIN are critical for advancing our specialty and supporting the well-being of pediatric anesthesiologists. GAIN addresses barriers to professional networking, including during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Society for Pediatric Anesthesia launched the Women's Empowerment and Leadership Initiative (WELI) in 2018 to empower highly productive women pediatric anesthesiologists to achieve equity, promotion, and leadership. WELI is focused on six career development domains: promotion and leadership, networking, conceptualization and completion of projects, mentoring, career satisfaction, and sense of well-being. We sought feedback about whether WELI supported members' career development by surveys emailed in November 2020 (baseline), May 2021 (6 months), and January 2022 (14 months). Program feedback was quantitatively evaluated by the Likert scale questions and qualitatively evaluated by extracting themes from free-text question responses. The response rates were 60.5% (92 of 152) for the baseline, 51%(82 of 161) for the 6-month, and 52% (96 of 185) for the 14-month surveys. Five main themes were identified from the free-text responses in the 6-and 14-month surveys.

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