A small study has found that environmental factors could have an impact on your wellness and wellbeing when you are undergoing surgery. Background noise in the operating theatre, such as the sound of talking, music being played or the noise of surgical equipment, can make it harder for surgeons to understand what people are saying to them, and this can result in dangerous breakdowns in communication between a surgical team who are carrying out an operation.
Medical errors are most commonly put down to miscommunication, which means that this study highlights the severe importance of keep distractions in an operating environment to a minimum. During surgery, surgeons have very important discussions regarding things such as medications, dosing and blood supply, and the information relating to these things can be quite specific and easy to get confused about. This research emphasises the importance of allowing this communication to take place easily for the safety of all patients.
Published in the Journal of American College of Surgeons, the study points out that the surgical environment is a very high-pressure and fast-paced one, where errors could easily occur due to the volume of specific information that has to be communicated. This makes it even more important to create an appropriate listening environment to ensure the best communication possible. Drug names sound similar, for example, but have entirely different functions, and a miscommunication in this area could even be fatal.
The researchers simulated a noisy environment for the purposes of the study, and 15 surgeons, each having between 1 and 30 years of experience, were then tested to see if they could understand and repeat words at various different noise levels (such as with or without music, through a surgical mask etc.). The study showed that the interference with speech comprehension occurred frequently when there was a noisy background environment, including chatter or the noise of music.
Comments are closed.