Does Being Polite Save Lives in the OR? One Surgeon Says Yes
If you believe the stereotype, surgery isn't a warm and fuzzy medical specialty (that would be family doctors), it's a cold, clinical engineering-like pursuit. And a surgeon is more likely to be known as "the knife" than "the smile."
The head of one major transplant center, however, would like to rearrange the stereotypical furniture. Says Andrew Klein, M.D., "Operating rooms are social environments where everyone must work together for the patient's benefit. When a surgeon, who is in the position of power, is rude and belittles the rest of the staff, it affects everything."
Klein and Pier Forni, Ph.D., authors of an article about civility and medicine in the Archives of Surgery, said an operating room is a crucible of stress that can manifest in bad personal behavior that isn't good for anybody. They acknowledge that scientific studies are reinforcing perceptions that outcomes improve when the surgical team cooperates.
As reported in MedPage Today, Klein and Forni found that rancor and the rudeness it engenders may be tied to heart disease and depression. They point to one study that deemed that "high-risk" uncivil behavior in the surgical suite increased the risk of postoperative death and complications.
The incivility extends beyond the OR and so do its side effects. In one study, 96% of nurses for the Department of Veterans Affairs' reported witnessing disruptive physician behavior. A survey by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices showed that 75% of nurses sought a co-worker's help to understand a confusing physician's order because they didn't want to interact with the doctor themselves. Seven percent of the nurses blamed doctor intimidation for medication errors.
In their article, Klein and Forni lobby for surgeons and OR teams "to lead a civility initiative in healthcare." That includes reviewing hiring criteria for surgical employees to look beyond the traditional standards of "accomplishments, knowledge, training, and productivity" in the hope of identifying ways in which prospective candidates can be assessed for how they function in a social environment.
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