Anesthesiology

Compassionate behavior is at the core of the medical profession: seeking to understand patients’ psychosocial, physical, and medical needs; timely attendance to those needs; and involving patients as they desire. In this issue of Anesthesiology, Waisel et al. evaluated compassionate behavior of anesthesia residents in a simulated preoperative encounter with a patient in pain before urgent surgery. Anesthesia residents had variable and, at times, flawed recognition of patient cues, responsiveness to patient cues, pain management, and patient interactions. Cover Illustration: A. Johnson, Vivo Visuals.

• Waisel et al.: Compassionate and Clinical Behavior of Residents in a Simulated Informed Consent Encounter, p. 159