Feasibility of Wearable Sensors to Assess Cognitive Load During Clinical Performance: Lessons Learned and Blueprint for Success.

Introduction: Cognitive load (CogL) is increasingly recognized as an important resource underlying operative performance. Current innovations in surgery aim to develop objective performance metrics via physiological monitoring from wearable digital sensors. Surgeons have access to consumer technology that could measure CogL but need guidance regarding device selection and implementation.

Surgical Sabermetrics: A Scoping Review of Technology-enhanced Assessment of Nontechnical Skills in the Operating Room.

Objective: To evaluate the current evidence for surgical sabermetrics: digital methods of assessing surgical nontechnical skills and investigate the implications for enhancing surgical performance.

Background: Surgeons need high-quality, objective, and timely feedback to optimize performance and patient safety. Digital tools to assess nontechnical skills have the potential to reduce human bias and aid scalability.

Cognitive Load Management: An Invaluable Tool for Safe and Effective Surgical Training.

This article highlights the importance of considering Cognitive Load (CL) and Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) during surgical training, focusing on the acquisition of intra-operative skills. It describes the basis of CLT with the overarching aim of describing CLT-based techniques to enhance current training strategies and surgical performance, many of which are instinctively already employed in surgical practice. Currently, methods of feedback and assessment are imperfect - typically subjective, unsystematic, opportunistic, or retrospective, and at risk of human bias.