Teamwork and Team Performance in the Operating Theatre

Team performance is increasingly recognised as an essential foundation of good surgical care and as a determinant of good surgical outcome. In order to understand team performance and to develop team training, reliable and valid measures of team performance are necessary. High reliability organisations such as aviation have highlighted the complexity of measuring team performance in dynamic multi-professional environments. Effective team coordination is underpinned by the understanding of each other's functional roles and objectives along with shared mental models. Interdisciplinary teamwork in surgery currently lacks models and objective measures of performance, important for assessment and formative feedback in practice and training and for developing surgical teams of the future. Furthermore restructuring of the workforce in healthcare has changed the traditional team approach necessitating increased awareness of individual members' responsibilities and limitations, especially during crises.

The aims of this project are the following:

(i) To explore the discrepancies between expectations of team members and reality.

(ii) To develop and validate an observational assessment of teamwork designed to capture the essentials of the surgical process.

(iii) To develop and pilot a team training module using multi-disciplinary crisis scenarios in a simulated operating theatre environment to train surgical teams.

(iv) To develop and pilot a tool that assesses observable distractions in and interruptions to the surgical process.

Read more