Transient Teams in the Operating Theatre

The study addresses a key challenge for the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom (UK) and other major organizations across the world by investigating professional communication in ‘transient’ teams - that is, communication between professionals who work on recurring tasks, such as surgical operations, in teams that exist only for the duration of the task, or even only for parts of it. Increasingly healthcare professionals step in and out of such newly formed teams, participating in the performance of complex tasks, often with colleagues whom they have never met before. This can have a profound effect on their work. Members of transient teams do not always know each other well, as they used to when these teams were much more stable. Our observational research in the operating theatre aims to show a glimpse of how this impacts on the communication between nurses and surgeons.