• James Dougherty, Charlie Slowey, Anne Hermon, and Jed Wolpaw.
• Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
• Postgrad Med J. 2020 Nov 1; 96 (1141): 703-705.

BackgroundCommunication failure is a common cause of medical errors and adverse events. Within the operating room (OR), there are many barriers to good communication, which can adversely affect patient outcome.ObjectiveImplementing a simple, cost-neutral tool aimed at improving intraoperative communication and engagement.MethodsThree anaesthesiology residents collected data using a data sheet and tailored surveys distributed to OR staff. Data were collected over a 2-week period in 2019, with 1 week each of preintervention and postintervention data collection. The intervention consisted of wearing OR caps displaying the first name and role of the anaesthesia resident clearly on the front.ResultsA total of 20 data sheets and 48 preintervention and postintervention surveys were collected for a response rate of 57%. There was a statistically significant increase in OR staff knowledge of the anaesthesia resident's name (66% vs 100%, p=<0.001), an increase in the mean number of times the surgical providers addressed the anaesthesia residents (3.6 vs 7.8, p=0.0074) and an increase in the mean number of times the surgical providers addressed them by their first name (0.7 vs 4, p=0.0067). Comments received during the intervention were positive with overwhelming support.ConclusionsThis study demonstrated that a simple, cost-effective intervention can result in dramatic improvement in intraoperative communication and engagement between teams.© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.

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