Researchers study teamwork with OR Black Box

Researchers at The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa are using an Operating Room Black Box (OR Black Box) to study whether improving teamwork and communication among operating room staff can make surgery safer for patients.

“When I was a medical student we had lots of training intechnical skills, like how to close an incision or insert a breathing tube. Butthere was less focus on soft skills like leadership, teamwork andcommunication,” said project lead Dr. Sylvain Boet, a scientist andanesthesiologist at The Ottawa Hospital and associate professor at the Universityof Ottawa. “Today medical staff receive more training in these areas, but wedon’t know whether it’s making a difference to patient outcomes.”

Dr. Boet and his team have already studied the best ways toteach these skills during simulated scenarios. However, they did not have a wayto measure whether these lessons were being applied in real-world operatingrooms until now.

The research team partnered with Dr. Teodor Grantcharov andhis team at St. Michael’s Hospital to implement an OR Black Box in one of theoperating rooms at The Ottawa Hospital’s general campus. This platform capturesaudio, video, patient vital signs and other information from the operating roomenvironment.

This information will be used to identify trends in teamworkand communication, which the researchers will link to how well patients didafter surgery. Information captured by the OR Black Box will be used forresearch purposes only, and faces and voices will be altered to protectprivacy.

“Healthcare providers are always looking for ways to makesurgery safer and more efficient,” said Dr. Nicole Etherington, member of theresearch team and clinical research associate at The Ottawa Hospital. “Thisproject gives us a unique opportunity to study how our operating room teamswork together, to better understand what they are doing well and identifypossible ways that they can improve.”

Understanding that surgery is already a stressful experiencefor patients, Dr. Boet’s team worked with patient advisors Maxime Lê and LaurieProulx to find the best way to explain to people why information from theirsurgery might be captured. Patients are told about the OR Black Box beforetheir surgery, and can choose to opt out at any time.

The Ottawa Hospital is the fourth hospital in Canada toimplement the OR Black Box, and the first one outside of the Toronto area.