Open AccessMore Than Talking About the Weekend: Content of Case‐Irrelevant Communication Within the OR Team
Author(s) -
Widmer Lukas W.,
Keller Sandra,
Tschan Franziska,
Semmer Norbert K.,
Holzer Eliane,
Candinas Daniel,
Beldi Guido
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
world journal of surgery
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.115
H-Index - 148
eISSN - 1432-2323
pISSN - 0364-2313
DOI - 10.1007/s00268-017-4442-4
Subject(s) - conversation , task (project management) , medicine , gossip , work (physics) , psychology , social psychology , communication , management , engineering , economics , mechanical engineering
Background Case‐irrelevant communication (CIC) is defined as “any conversation” irrelevant to the case. It includes small talk, but also communication related to other work issues besides the actual task. CIC during surgeries is generally seen as distracting, despite a lack of knowledge about the content of CIC and its regulation in terms of adjustments to the situation of CIC. Primary goal of the study was to evaluate CIC content; secondary goal was to evaluate whether surgical teams regulate CIC according to different concentration demands of surgical procedures. Methods In 125 surgeries, 1396 CIC events were observed. CIC were content coded into work‐related CIC (pertaining to other tasks or work in general) and social CIC (pertaining to acquaintance talk, gossip, or private conversation). The impact of different phases and the difficulty of the surgical procedure on CIC were assessed. Results Work‐related CIC were significantly more frequent (2.49 per hour, SD = 2.17) than social CIC (1.42 per hour, SD = 2.17). Across phases, frequency of work‐related CIC was constant, whereas social CIC increased significantly across phases. In surgeries assessed as highly difficult by the surgeons, social CIC were observed at a lower frequency, and less work‐related CIC were observed during the main phase compared to surgeries assessed as less difficult. Conclusion The high proportion of work‐related CIC indicates that surgical teams deal with other tasks during surgeries. Surgical teams adapt CIC according to the demands of the procedure. Hospital policies should support these adaptations rather than attempt to suppress CIC entirely.