Surgery and Anesthesia Preoperative "Virtual Huddle": A Pilot Trial to Enhance Communication across the Drape - PubMed (original) (raw)

Surgery and Anesthesia Preoperative "Virtual Huddle": A Pilot Trial to Enhance Communication across the Drape

Nicole H Goldhaber et al. Appl Clin Inform. 2023 Aug.

Abstract

Objectives: Effective communication between surgeons and anesthesiologists is critical for high-quality, safe, and efficient perioperative patient care. Despite widespread implementation of surgical safety checklists and time-outs, ineffective team communication remains a leading cause of patient safety events in the operating room. To promote effective communication, we conducted a pilot trial of a "virtual huddle" between anesthesiologists and surgeons.

Methods: Attending anesthesiologists and surgeons at an academic medical center were recruited by email to participate in this feasibility trial. An electronic health record-based smartphone application was utilized to create secure group chats among trial participants the day before a surgery. Text notifications connected a surgeon/anesthesiologist pair in order to introduce colleagues, facilitate a preoperative virtual huddle, and enable open-ended, text message-based communication. A 5-point Likert scale-based survey with a free-text component was used to evaluate the utility of the virtual huddle and usability of the electronic platform.

Results: A total of 51 unique virtual huddles occurred between 16 surgeons and 12 anesthesiologists over 99 operations. All postintervention survey questions received a positive rating (range: 3.50/5.00-4.53/5.00) and the virtual huddle was considered to be easy to use (4.47/5.00), improve attending-to-attending communication (4.29/5.00), and improve patient care (4.22/5.00). There were no statistically significant differences in the ratings between surgery and anesthesia. In thematic analysis of qualitative survey results, Participants indicated the intervention was particularly useful in interdisciplinary relationship-building and reducing room turnover. The huddle was less useful for simple, routine cases or when participation was one sided.

Conclusion: A preoperative virtual huddle may be a simple and effective intervention to improve communication and teamwork in the operating room. Further study and consideration of broader implementation is warranted.

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Conflict of interest statement

None declared.

Figures

Fig. 1

Fig. 1

Screenshot of the initial secure text message that creates a group chat between the attending anesthesiologist and surgeon on the day prior to surgery (data presented in Fig. 1 are imaginary).

Fig. 2

Fig. 2

Thematic map analysis of feedback from participating surgeons and anesthesiologists.

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