Scrub Practitioners' List of Intraoperative Non-Technical Skills -SPLINTS
Lucy Mitchell, Prof Rhona Flin, Dr Steven Yule (University of Aberdeen), Mr Simon Paterson-Brown (Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh), Prof George Youngson, Kathy Coutts (Royal Aberdeen Children's Hospital), Janet Mitchell, (Aberdeen Royal Infirmary), Dr Nikki Maran (Scottish Clinical Simulation Centre), Prof David Rowley (Ninewells Hospital). For further information email: l.mitchell@abdn.ac.uk Tel: 01224 273212
This project is funded by NHS Education Scotland (2007-2009) and a Scottish Funding Council Strategic Research Development Grant (2009 – 2011). The aim of SPLINTS is to identify the non-technical skills (e.g. teamwork, communication) which scrub practitioners (i.e. nurses, technicians) use whilst performing their role. Methods of task analysis utilised to identify the scrub practitioners' non-technical skills included a review of the nursing, medical and psychology literature (see publications section); observations, during live operations, of scrub practitioners on task and an interview study with experienced theatre scrub nurses (n=25) and consultant surgeons (n=9) from four Scottish hospitals. Analyses of those data revealed that non-technical skills necessary for safe and effective scrub practitioner performance include situation awareness, communication and teamwork and task management.
The current phase of work has developed a SPLINTS taxonomy prototype which is being tested with experienced scrub nurses.