the question of PP vs academics depends on what you are asking.
From a department POV? In PP people just want to get the job done as safe and efficiently as possible. Not a lot of complaining about picking up rooms from someone else so they can go home, nobody cares if cases get added into their room, etc. When I was a resident I remember attendings going bonkers if someone moved a case into their room because they'd have to work longer. In PP, you just send the person home and someone else can do the case. When it's your turn to go home, you go home. When you work late, you pick up other rooms even when yours are finished.
In terms of speed/quality of surgeons, that is a different question and not necessarily related. In general, PP surgeons move a lot faster than academic ones. For one thing, they aren't teaching anybody how to do something so that saves an immense amount of time right there. No need to talk about what instrument to use and how to use it, they just do it. I work in PP anesthesia, but in a few locations we still work with academic surgeons and all that comes with including residents and med students. So while we can do the anesthesia part lickety split, the 2 hour appy or 5 hour lap chole still happens.
In terms of the anesthesia day to day stuff, I think in PP there is far less caring about being fancy or doing things because you can. Keep it safe, quick, and simple. We don't really spend time experimenting with the 3725th way to skin the cat, because we are already really damn good at the 1st way and the goal is to provide the safest and best experience for the patient, not to see how cool it would be for us to do it some other way.
From a day to day work POV, I enjoy PP because I like doing things and I don't like teaching others how to do them. Epiduals, CVPs, a-lines, difficult intubations, PNBs, etc. I'd rather do it myself in 1/10 the time it takes to walk someone else through it.
