Learning and Teaching in the Operating Room: A Surgical Perspective

The operating room (OR) is the main venue where trainee surgeons learn their craft. With educational challenges such as limited OR time and caseload, inconsistent faculty preparation and motivation, and the increasing complexity of cases, the case for efficient and structured intraoperative teaching in an environment optimized for learning is greater than ever.

A separate scoping review of literature of what is known about learner and teacher behaviors in the OR was undertaken and forms the basis of this chapter. We present a distillation of key features of this review. The intra-operative learning process and the factors which influence it are examined. The various interventions and models which may help in teaching and learning are summarized.

There are some findings that we intuitively know that enhance the learning experience, such as engaging learners and treating them well, giving learners consistent, constructive, and structured feedback, and allowing learners opportunities to operate with adequate supervision. What is less intuitive are findings on the use of humor, banter, and “war stories” to socialize trainees into the OR environment, the engagement of other stakeholders in the OR such as anesthesia and nursing colleagues to optimize learning, and the study of learning by motor and visual cues which has increasing relevance with the use of laparoscopic surgery where decisions are made on visual information alone.

The richness of the materials contributed by authors of the paper in this review provides a sound basis upon which to inform our practices, and to guide future research.