讲座题目:Air Pollution and Doctors’ Work Performance: Evidence from Extubation Failure in the Intensive Care Unit

Abstract:When it comes to the impacts of air pollution on the healthcare system, previous studies mostly focus on the increased patient demand due to air pollution-related health deterioration, taking a demand-side perspective. We extend this stream of literature from a provider-side perspective by studying how air pollution can affect doctors’ work performance, which is an ignored effect on the healthcare system. Using a unique data set that records all extubation events from a cardiothoracic intensive care unit in Singapore over 80 months, we address our research question in doctors’ extubation work. We find a negative relationship between air pollution exposure and doctors’ extubation performance. Specifically, a one-standard-deviation increase in Pollutant Standards Index is associated with a 11.71% increase in the probability of 48-hour reintubation. We also show that the negative psychological effect of air pollution on doctors could be an important mechanism. Additionally, according to the mediating effect of extubation protocol adherence and the non-linear moderating effect of workload observed in the mechanism discussion, healthcare managers could enhance doctors’ protocol adherence or adjust workload level to mitigate the impact of air pollution. Our research highlights that ambient air pollution is an unexplored environmental risk to doctors’ work performance and provides practical insights to fight against air pollution.

Short Bio: Zhichao Zheng is an Associate Professor of Operations Management at the Singapore Management University. Specializing in data analytics and optimization, his research primarily focuses on healthcare operations management and clinical decision-making. He also extends his research to sharing economics and supply chain risk management. His work is published in leading operations management journals such as Operations Research, Management Science, and Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and INFORMS Journal of Applied Analytics. In addition, he also publishes in various medical journals. He has held the position of guest Associate Editor for Management Science and served as an Associate Editor for Management Science, Service Science, as well as the Journal of Management Science and Engineering. He has also contributed as a judge in a range of paper competitions, with a particular focus on healthcare research. He has successfully secured substantial funding for his research projects, receiving over 800,000 SGD in support from the Ministry of Education in Singapore. He offers courses in Management Science, Service and Operations Analytics, Data Analytics in Healthcare, and Business Analytics to undergraduate, master's, and MBA students. He received a Bachelor of Science with First Class Honors in Applied Mathematics from the Department of Mathematics at the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2009 and obtained his Ph.D. in Management from the Department of Decision Sciences (renamed to the Department of Analytics & Operations) at NUS in 2013.