This year, Clinical Congress in Boston, Massachusetts, offers surgeons two opportunities in the Exhibit Hall to participate in hands-on simulation laboratories: the Surgical Ergonomics Clinic and Surgical Metrics Project. Both are open October 23–25. Participants should expect to spend roughly 20 minutes at each, and no appointments are necessary.
Surgical Ergonomics Clinic
The Surgical Ergonomics Clinic will offer surgical stations simulating open, laparoscopic, and robotic OR environments to show surgeons how they can stand, move, and collaborate with teammates to maximize efficiency and maintain musculoskeletal health. Participants will be able to try out adjustable OR components and receive personalized feedback on body positioning, movement, sightlines, and other issues from ergonomics coaches.
In addition, a certified physical therapist will share different stretching exercise protocols that can be implemented in the operating room, between cases, or at home. This unique, hands-on learning opportunity with the Surgical Ergonomics Recommendations is part of an overall plan to positively impact ergonomic challenges experienced by surgeons worldwide.
Surgical Metrics Project
The Surgical Metrics Project is “bringing to light new data streams that can help practitioners engage with one another in ways they've never engaged before. In addition to creating a digital rendering of complex technical skills and intraoperative decision-making, participants will be able to share tips and tricks, interact with expert surgical coaches, and contribute to a performance database for resident learning,” said project leader Carla M. Pugh, MD, PhD, FACS, director of the Technology Enabled Clinical Improvement Center at Stanford University in California.
The project invites surgeons to participate in simulated surgical procedures while recording their own movements and brain waves to better understand the critical physical and mental maneuvers that underpin the best outcomes in the operating room. Digital performance data allow the development of something surgery has had very little of to date: objective comparisons and digital mapping of successful and unsuccessful techniques and the mastery of specific surgical tasks by individual surgeons.
Dr. Pugh explained, “One of the first goals of the project is to build a database of surgical performance. What operative decisions do you make and why? What is the variance in those technical decisions that experts make?”
