The "Key" or "Critical" Portions of an Operation: Understanding Attending Supervision and Resident Autonomy From a Legal Perspective.

Objective: To obtain a legal understanding of the "key" or "critical" portions of an operation, pertaining to attending supervision, resident autonomy, and patient safety.

Design: Snowball sampling, a subset of purposive sampling, was used to develop a population of 47 risk managers and legal counsel, who were given an online, qualitative questionnaire. Interpretive description was used to analyze qualitative data.