Multidisciplinary operating room simulation-based team training to reduce treatment errors: a feasibility study in New Zealand hospitals.

Aims: Communication failures in healthcare are frequent and linked to adverse events and treatment errors. Simulation-based team training has been proposed to address this. We aimed to explore the feasibility of a simulation-based course for all members of the operating room (OR) team, and to evaluate its effectiveness.

Methods: Members of experienced OR teams were invited to participate in three simulated clinical events using an integrated surgical and anesthesia model. We collected information on costs, Behavioural Marker of Risk Index (BMRI) (a measure of team information sharing) and participants' educational gains.

Results: We successfully recruited 20 full OR teams. Set up costs were NZ$50,000. Running costs per course were NZ$4,000, excluding staff. Most participants rated the course highly. BMRI improved significantly (P = 0.04) and thematic analysis identified educational gains for participants.

Conclusion: We demonstrated feasibility of multidisciplinary simulation-based training for surgeons, anesthetists, nurses and anaesthetic technicians. The course showed evidence of participant learning and we obtained useful information on cost. There is considerable potential to extend this type of team-based simulation to improve the performance of OR teams and increase safety for surgical patients.