How prevalent are hazardous attitudes among orthopaedic surgeons?

So-called "hazardous attitudes" (macho, impulsive, antiauthority, resignation, invulnerable, and confident) were identified by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Canadian Air Transport Administration as contributing to road traffic incidents among college-aged drivers and felt to be useful for the prevention of aviation accidents. The concept of hazardous attitudes may also be useful in understanding adverse events in surgery, but it has not been widely studied.

We surveyed a cohort of orthopaedic surgeons to determine the following: (1) What is the prevalence of hazardous attitudes in a large cohort of orthopaedic surgeons? (2) Do practice setting and/or demographics influence variation in hazardous attitudes in our cohort of surgeons? (3) Do surgeons feel they work in a climate that promotes patient safety?

We asked the members of the Science of Variation Group-fully trained, practicing orthopaedic and trauma surgeons from around the world-to complete a questionnaire validated in college-aged drivers measuring six attitudes associated with a greater likelihood of collision and used by pilots to assess and teach aviation safety. We accepted this validation as applicable to surgeons and modified the questionnaire accordingly. We also asked them to complete the Modified Safety Climate Questionnaire, a questionnaire assessing the absence of a safety climate that is based on the patient safety cultures in healthcare organizations instrument. Three hundred sixty-four orthopaedic surgeons participated, representing a 47% response rate of those with correct email addresses who were invited.

Thirty-eight percent (137 of 364 surgeons) had at least one score that would have been considered dangerously high in pilots (> 20), including 102 with dangerous levels of macho (28%) and 41 with dangerous levels of self-confidence (11%). After accounting for possible confounding variables, the variables most closely associated with a macho attitude deemed hazardous in pilots were supervision of surgical trainees in the operating room (p = 0.003); location of practice in Canada (p = 0.059), Europe (p = 0.021), and the United States (p = 0.005); and being an orthopaedic trauma surgeon (p = 0.046) (when compared with general orthopaedic surgeons), but accounted for only 5.3% of the variance (p < 0.001). On average, 19% of surgeon responses to the Modified Safety Climate Questionnaire implied absence of a safety climate.

Hazardous attitudes are common among orthopaedic surgeons and relate in small part to demographics and practice setting. Future studies should further validate the measure of hazardous attitudes among surgeons and determine if they are associated with preventable adverse events. We agree with aviation safety experts that awareness of amelioration of such attitudes might improve safety in all complex, high-risk endeavors, including surgery-a line of thinking that merits additional research.