Measuring Attention Patterns and Expertise of Scrub Nurses in the Operating Theatre in Relation to Reducing Errors in Surgical Counts

Abstract

Cases of retained foreign objects after surgery have been a problem since the beginning of modern surgery. However, the preventive measure to this problem has remained rather primitive – through manual surgical count by scrub nurses. The process of counting is subject to errors under stressful environment, such as time pressure, distractions, and high cognitive workload. The objective of this study is to measure the differences in the performance and attention patterns according to the expertise of the scrub nurses within an operating theatre, finally drawing a conclusion on the means through which the performance of scrub nurses can be optimized to reduce chances of errors. Qualitative observations on three different types of surgery and two eye movement data collected in the operation theatre have shown both qualitative and quantitative differences in performance and behavioral patterns between expert and novice scrub nurses, suggesting that task switching, task prioritization and situation awareness are latent factors affecting their task performances.