Exploring Two Topics- Surgeon Wellbeing and Eating Disorders (Adverse Events, ACT, ARFID, and more...!)

Exploring Two Topics- Surgeon Wellbeing and Eating Disorders (Adverse Events,  ACT, ARFID, and more...!)

This talk will cover my two clinical/research areas and would value your thoughts on how to develop and implement these ideas further.

Surgeon Wellbeing

Surgeons are affected when things go wrong in surgery; following an interoperative surgical complication or error, surgeons experience a range of manifestations of distress, including post-traumatic stress symptoms, anxiety, depression, sleep difficulties, increased alcohol use, and relationship issues (1). The impact of adverse events also appears to have a cumulative effect for surgeons, described as “a piece of them being taken away with every complication” (p1185) (2). Interventions to support surgeons following adverse events (and more generally to support wellbeing) will be discussed, including the initial research and evaluation of these interventions.

Orthorexia Nervosa and ARFID

Orthorexia Nervosa (ON) and Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) are not well understood clinically or empirically; while ON refers to a disordered eating style focusing on the obsessive preoccupation with healthy eating (3), ARFID is an eating disorder that currently does not have a NHS treatment pathway, and is characterised by disgust and/or fear around eating certain foods due to the aversive consequences of eating, the sensory properties of food, and/or lack of interest in eating (4). This part of the talk will briefly discuss initial research on experiences of ON, the clinical impact of ARFID, and potential avenues for further intervention research in this area.

1. Turner K, Bolderston H, Thomas K, Greville-Harris M, Withers C, McDougall S.(2022) Impact of adverse events on surgeons. British Journal of Surgery. 109(4):308–10. 

2. Luu S, Patel P, et al. (2012) Waking up the next morning: surgeons’ emotional reactions to adverse events. Med Educ. 46(12):1179–88. 

3. Cena H, et al. (2019) Definition and diagnostic criteria for orthorexia nervosa: a narrative review of the literature. Eating and Weight Disorders - Studies on Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity . 24(2):209–46. 

4. American Psychiatric Association (2013) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)