Improving Teamwork: Evaluating Workload of Surgical Team During Robot-assisted Surgery

To investigate the cognitive and physical workload experienced by each operating room team member for different types of urologic procedures.

Surgeons, anesthesiologists, surgical fellows, bedside assistants, circulating nurses, and scrub nurses completed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Task Load Index questionnaire for various urologic robot-assisted surgery procedures. A total of 338 questionnaires from 55 unique individuals were collected. Workload differences by role, type of procedure, and surgery duration were analyzed using analysis of variance for each of the 6 domains of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Task Load Index. The effects of trainees' participation on their perceived workload and the workloads of the lead surgeon and bedside assistant were analyzed with correlation.

The role of the surgical team was significant for all the scales of workload, and there was a main effect type of surgery on temporal demand and frustration. Frustration was higher for prostatectomy in comparison to cystectomy for the trainee surgeon. On the other hand, it was lower for the anesthesiologist, bedside assistant, and the circulating nurse. There was no effect of procedural complexity on workload. Regardless of surgical complexity, the trainees performed approximately 40% of the procedure without significantly impacting their perceived workload.

This study provides an analysis of variations and contributors to workload parameters and serves as a platform to optimize team members' workload during robot-assisted surgery.