Improving Faculty's Ability to Speak Up to Others in the Operating Room

Improving Faculty's Ability to Speak Up to Others in the Operating Room: A Simulation Based Randomized Controlled Trial of an Educational Intervention

Importance Team members speaking-up by raising concerns about inappropriate or unsafe actions of others within the team can have direct, immediate, and preventive effect on adverse outcomes. However, little is known about the hurdles and enablers of this behavior in healthcare, especially within the operating room setting.

Objective

1. Determine if an educational workshop would improve speaking-up behaviors of practicing anesthesiologists when presented with realistically-simulated clinical situations. 2.Describe speaking-up behaviors addressed to a surgeon, a nurse, and a colleague. 3. Identify the self-reported hurdles and enablers for speaking-up in those situations encountered.

Design Randomized controlled experiment of an educational workshop intervention on communication behaviors in a simulated case. Qualitative analysis of debriefing conversations following the simulated case.

Setting Established academic simulation center

Participants Seventy-one practicing anesthesiologists from four academic medical centers and one community hospital

Intervention Fifty minute educational workshop on speaking-up that included rationale, conversational techniques, a rubric for speaking-up, and role-play.

Main Outcomes and Measures

1. Observed communication in a simulated case that included a surgeon falling asleep during surgery, inappropriate activation of a speakerphone by a nurse, and an incorrect treatment order by a colleague in response to a venous air embolism. 2. Transcribed conversation during a structured debriefing, analyzed for hurdles and enablers.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Attending Anesthesiologist

Exclusion Criteria:

• Prior exposure to test case