ANESTHESIA PROVIDERS’ PERCEIVED DISTRACTIONS IN THE OPERATING ROOM DURING INDUCTION AT AN AMBULATORY SURGERY CENTER

There are a variety of distractions that can occur in the operating room during the induction of anesthesia. A review of the literature revealed that common distractions include: noise, music, cell phones and pagers, production pressure, and unnecessary conversations. This project is part of a larger quality improvement project investigating anesthesia providers’ perceptions of the frequencies and types of distractions occurring during induction at three different sites: an ambulatory surgery center, a mid-sized, suburban hospital, and a level one trauma center. This project focuses on identifying distraction severity and frequency at an ambulatory surgery center. An anonymous, electronic survey was distributed to physician anesthesiologists, certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs), and student registered nurse anesthetists (SRNAs), at these three different clinical locations within a large healthcare system. The survey asked providers to rate perceived frequency and severity of selected distractions on a modified Likert scale. A total of thirteen anesthesia providers working at the ambulatory surgery center responded to the survey. The results show that conversations were found to be the most severely distracting while music and equipment alarms were equally found to be the least distracting. Females found music, conversations, and personal cell phone use to be more distracting than males. Younger anesthesia providers found equipment alarms to be more distracting than older anesthesia providers. Across the three site locations, survey comparison found no difference between results. The aim of this project is to discover what is distracting to anesthesia providers during anesthetic induction so that future projects can begin to mitigate the occurrence of these distractors and promote increased patient safety during the induction of anesthesia.