The Effect of Educational Intervention on the Improvement of Nontechnical Skills in Circulating Nurses

Abstract

Background. Nontechnical skills are necessary for clinicians’ safe performance and prevention of errors in the operating room. Educational intervention is a useful way to improve these skills, which are a vital area for improvement. Circulating nurses are surgical team members whose work depends heavily on using nontechnical skills. This study is aimed at assessing the effect of an educational intervention on the improvement of circulating nurses’ nontechnical skills. Methods. This semiexperimental study was conducted on 300 circulating nurses divided into the intervention and no intervention groups each containing 150 participants. The nontechnical skills were assessed using the circulating practitioners’ list of nontechnical skills. Then, the intervention group received training regarding these skills, and the two groups were evaluated again. After all, the data were entered into the SPSS 24 software and were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Wilcoxon and Mann–Whitney tests. Furthermore, Kendall’s tau, independent sample t -test, and one-way ANOVA were used for assessment of relationship between median scores and demographics. Results. The results revealed a significant improvement in the scores of all domains of nontechnical skills in the intervention group ( p < 0.05 ). The highest and lowest improvements were observed in teamwork (42%) and situational awareness (16.7%), respectively. After the intervention, the scores of some of the behaviors were still below the average level or were not improved significantly. Conclusions. Circulating nurses’ nontechnical skills can be improved by educational interventions. However, regarding the low scores or no improvements in the scores of some behaviors, other intervention types such as policymaking and correcting the existing hierarchies in the operating room can be useful to complete the educational interventions.

A Novel Approach for Engagement in Team Training in High-Technology Surgery: The Robotic-Assisted Surgery Olympics

“…Indeed, a major barrier to the implementation of training for experienced staff is that individuals may not believe they need to improve and thus see the training as unnecessary. 5 Importantly, because our participants reported learning new techniques that would support their RAS practice in the future, despite their already high confidence, this adds further weight to the value of approaches similar to ours. One staff member commented that the RAS Olympics provided her team with the opportunity to excel in tasks and perform better than they would have expected in a real environment during a surgical case.…”

“…It is possible that this was due to a small sample, ceiling effects with the scale or responses, or overconfidence in skills. Indeed, a major barrier to the implementation of training for experienced staff is that individuals may not believe they need to improve and thus see the training as unnecessary 5 . Importantly, because our participants reported learning new techniques that would support their RAS practice in the future, despite their already high confidence, this adds further weight to the value of approaches similar to ours.…”

“…The high-technology multispecialist work of modern day healthcare delivery requires teams of multiple independent stakeholders to work together to deliver care within changing everyday demands of the work system 1–3 . It is recognized that ongoing attention to development and maintenance of both technical skills (TS) and, more recently, non-TS (NTS), has benefits for safety, efficiency, and patient outcomes 4–6 . There has consequently been considerable practical and academic interest in the delivery of technical and teamwork training within both organizational constraints and with varying individual attitudes 7,8 .…”

Assessment of Surgical Teams’ Teamwork Skills in Pediatric Surgery: A Cross-sectional Study

“…Reported positive attitudes toward the use of surgical safety checklists in pediatric surgeries (20) also show that operating room staff does well in showing their nontechnical skills in these operating rooms. Several studies have shown some poor teamwork skills in operating room practitioners in Iran (21)(22)(23)(24). However, all of these studies were conducted at the individual level and on different surgery types than pediatric.…”

Assessment of Circulating Nurses’ Aseptic Practices in Orthopedic and General Surgeries of Public Hospitals in Shiraz, Iran

“…Asepsis means without the presence of pathogens and implies that an object does not convey pathogenic microorganisms (2). One of the circulating nurses' most important duties is supervising aseptic practices, which require proper nontechnical skills (10)(11)(12). Supervising aseptic practices could be helpful in preventing surgical site infections (13), which are known as significant concerns for the surgical team (14).…”