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Interruptions and miscommunications in surgery: an observational study

Brigid M Gillespie1, Wendy Chaboyer, Nicole Fairweather

  • 1NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Nursing Interventions for Hospitalized Patients, Griffith Institute of Health, Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus, Queensland, Australia.

AORN Journal
|May 1, 2012
PubMed

Insights

Surgical miscommunications decrease with team familiarity but increase with intraoperative interruptions. Understanding these factors can help reduce errors in the operating room.

Area of Science:

  • Medical communication
  • Surgical safety
  • Human factors in medicine

Background:

  • Miscommunication in surgery can lead to significant loss of procedure-specific information, impacting patient safety.
  • Effective communication is crucial for successful surgical outcomes.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the relationship between team familiarity, intraoperative interruptions, and surgical miscommunications.
  • To identify factors contributing to information loss during surgical procedures.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of 160 surgical procedures across 10 specialties over six months.
  • Quantification of interruptions (conversational, procedural) and miscommunication types (audience, purpose, occasion, content, experience).
  • Descriptive analysis and correlational statistics (Kendall's tau) to assess relationships.

Main Results:

  • An inverse correlation was found between team familiarity and surgical miscommunications (τ = -.33, P < .01).
  • A positive correlation was observed between intraoperative interruptions and miscommunications (τ = .30, P < .01).

Conclusions:

  • Increased team familiarity is associated with fewer surgical miscommunications.
  • Higher numbers of intraoperative interruptions correlate with increased miscommunications.
  • Findings support the development of evidence-based interventions to mitigate surgical miscommunication.

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