Contextualizing the tone of the operating room in practice: drawing on the literature to connect the dots

Hillary Lia; Melanie Hammond Mobilio; Frank Rudzicz; Carol-Anne Moulton

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1167098

Contextualizing the tone of the operating room in practice: drawing on the literature to connect the dots

Front Psychol. 2023 Jun 2:14:1167098. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1167098. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Hillary Lia^{1

2

3}, Melanie Hammond Mobilio^{1

4}, Frank Rudzicz^{2

3

5

6}, Carol-Anne Moulton^{1

2

7}

Affiliations

¹ The Wilson Centre, Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network, Toronto, ON, Canada.
² Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
³ Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Toronto, ON, Canada.
⁴ Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
⁵ Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
⁶ Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada.
⁷ Division of General Surgery, University Health Network, Toronto, ON, Canada.

Abstract

The study of teamwork in the operating room has made significant strides in uncovering key constructs which shape safe and effective intraoperative care. However, in recent years, there have been calls to understand teamwork in the operating room more fully by embracing the complexity of the intraoperative environment. We propose the construct of tone as a useful lens through which to understand intraoperative teamwork. In this article, we review the literature on culture, shared mental models, and psychological safety, linking each to the construct of tone. By identifying tone as a theoretical orientation to demonstrate the overlap between these concepts, we aim to provide a starting point for new ways to understand intraoperative team dynamics.

Keywords: emotions as social information (EASI) theory; interprofessional teams; operating room teamwork; operating room tone; surgical team performance.

Publication types

Review