Perceptions of operating room tension across professions: building generalizable evidence and educational resources.
BACKGROUND
Effective team communication is critical in health care, yet no curriculum exists to teach it. Naturalistic research has revealed systematic patterns of tension and profession-specific interpretation of operating room team communication. Replication of these naturalistic findings in a controlled, video-based format could provide a basis for formal curricula.


METHODS
Seventy-two surgeons, nurses, and anesthesiologists independently rated three video-based scenarios for the three professions' level of tension, responsibility for creating tension and responsibility for resolution. Data were analyzed using three-way, mixed-design analyses of variance.


RESULTS
The three professions rated tension levels of the various scenarios similarly (F=1.19, ns), but rated each profession's responsibility for creating (F=2.86, p<.05) and resolving (F=1.91, p<.01) tension differently, often rating their profession as having relatively less responsibility than the others.


CONCLUSIONS
These results provide an evidence base for team communications training about tension patterns, disparity of professional perspectives, and implications for team function.
Lingard
Lorelei
L
Wilson Centre for Research in Education, 200 Elizabeth Street, Eaton South 1-605, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. lorelei.lingard@utoronto.ca
Regehr
Glenn
G
Espin
Sherry
S
Devito
Isabella
I
Whyte
Sarah
S
Buller
Douglas
D
Sadovy
Bohdan
B
Rogers
David
D
Reznick
Richard
R
D000776:Anesthesiology / Q000193:education; D002170:Canada; D003142:Communication; D003479:Curriculum; D013502:General Surgery / Q000193:education; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D019212:Multimedia; D009871:Operating Room Nursing / Q000193:education; D009873:Operating Rooms; D010348:Patient Care Team; D014481:United States