Psychosocial elements of professionally-relevant behaviour in scrub nurses

Abstract

The significance of professionally-relevant behaviour of scrub nurses for teamwork in the operating room is increasing, as proven by the studies carried out over the last decades worldwide. Non-technical skills include both social and cognitive elements. Specific behaviour evaluation system can be used to identify, assess and improve non-technical skills of scrub nurses. Improvement of non-technical skills helps reduce staff errors in the intraoperative period. The objective of the research is to find out whether there are statistically significant differences between scrub nurses’ self-assessment of their non-technical skills, their implementation and surgeons' expectations. Demographic questionnaire, interview and Scrub Practitioners List of Intraoperative Non-technical Skills (SPLINT) were used in this study. Scrub nurses tend to engage in minimal communication and only a half of surgeons show expectations for exchange of thoughts and ideas from scrub nurses. This shows that the exchange of information between physicians and scrub nurses is generally insufficient. Surgical team members pay more attention to signals given by the surgical team and surgical process and rarely report on perception of signals given by medical equipment and a patient. Such data may be indicative of insufficient attention to a patient’s safety during the surgery.

Key words. Non-technical skills, scrub nurse, scrub nurse’s skills