Implementation of Resilience Engineering for Operating Room. Unveiling the Hidden Interactions among Multi-Professionals in a Surgical Team

Abstract

Background: The implementation of resilience engineering for an operating room is difficult; however, its study would become important for the surgeon’s personal and surgical team in order to develop a new surgical safety management. An expert operator must perform an operation with his surgical team that includes an anesthetist, scrub nurse, and young assistant. However, there exist some gaps among these multi-professionals. Objective: From the viewpoint of an expert operator, to have an operation go well, we would describe how to reconcile their gaps. We will explain the gaps among the multi-professionals in a surgical team, such as hidden interactions between the operator and anesthetist, surgeon and scrub nurse, and expert operator and young assistant. Material and Methods: We assumed three types of interactions among the multi-professionals in the operating theater and we clarified how to bridge the gaps by revealing what the operator thinks, what the anesthetist thinks, what the scrub nurse thinks, and what the young assistant thinks in the surgical team, and by understanding how they perform during surgery. Outcomes: What the expert operator thinks and how he performs in surgery is summarized by the following three items: 1) safety is first, 2) achieving the operative purpose, and 3) fast surgery. We interviewed the surgical team members. In order for the surgery to go well, what the important thing is “safety first” for any surgical professionals. The sentence, “safety is first” is the magic words, such as “open sesame”. They can communicate with each other on the spot and build the team and system. To develop a strong and resilient surgical team, these four behaviors are important to improve the performance as a system: 1) sharing the same goal and same priority, 2) understanding gaps with clear verbal communication. Coming out from own professional boundaries (takotsubo), speaking in words, 3) all of us, having a strong will (iron heart), and learning anger management, and 4) improvising even in difficult situations. Conclusion: We would like to summarize the items learned from my three described scenes, which are 1) to develop a strong and resilient surgical team, 2) what we have to do, and how we have to perform, and 3) how we can develop a team and system.