• Hunter D D Witmer, Çağla Keçeli, Joshua A Morris-Levenson, Ankit Dhiman, Amber Kratochvil, Jeffrey B Matthews, Dan Adelman, and Kiran K Turaga.
• Department of Surgery, University of Chicago Medicine, Chicago, IL.
• Ann. Surg. 2023 May 1; 277 (5): e1006e1017e1006-e1017.

ObjectiveTo propose a framework for quantification of surgical team familiarity.BackgroundOperating room (OR) teamwork quality is associated with familiarity among team members and their individual specialization. We describe novel measures of OR team familiarity and specialty experience.MethodsSurgeon-scrub (SS) and surgeon-circulator (SC) teaming scores, defined as the pair's proportion of interactions relative to the surgeon's total cases in the preceding 6 months were calculated between 2017 and 2021 at an academic medical center. Nurse service-line (SL) experience scores were defined as the proportion of a nurse's cases performed within the given specialty. SS, SC, and nurse-SL scores were analyzed by specialty, case urgency, robotic approach, and surgeon academic rank. Two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests were used to determine heterogeneity between distributions.ResultsA total of 37,364 operations involving 150 attending surgeons and 222 nurses were analyzed. Median SS and SC scores were 0.08 (interquartile range: 0.03-0.19) and 0.06 (interquartile range: 0.03-0.13), respectively. Higher margin SLs, senior faculty rank, elective, and robotic cases were associated with greater SS, SC, and nurse-SL scores ( P <0.001).ConclusionsThese novel measures of teaming and specialization illustrate the low levels of OR team familiarity and objectively highlight differences that necessitate a deliberate evaluation of current OR scheduling practices.Copyright © 2022 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.

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