Moog Inc. Engineering Suite

This lab provides a location to conduct the human factors experiments for health care improvement, with particular emphasis on surgical training and usability evaluations.

The laboratory is configured with movable furniture, which provides the ability to configure the space as needed to conduct the usability evaluation. Additionally, for use in data capture, the laboratory includes software packages that allow video recording and analysis of video screens at each station and audio recording and playback from each station.

Adjacent to the simulation centers, and part of the medical school, this lab has space for engineering graduate students and faculty to develop solutions in concert with clinical staff.

SurgE Surgery Ergonomics and Human Factors Laboratory

Training surgical skills

A physician must master technical skills to ensure a procedure is completed successfully. In order to enhance surgical training, new virtual skills trainers are being developed for tasks ranging from fundamentals of laparoscopic surgery to camera navigation and advanced suturing.

We have been collaborating with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Kitware Inc. on the development and validation of these devices. Once the devices are validated, we have proposed the design and testing of advanced skills training curricula to enhance the expertise of medical residents.

Non-technical skills in surgery

Errors unrelated to surgical techniques have been recognized by the Joint Commission as a primary cause of adverse events during surgery. In this context, minimizing interruptions and workflow disruptions during surgical procedures remains crucial for patient safety.

We have developed a methodology for capturing team activities and workflow during robot-assisted surgery, which has allowed us to quantify that more than 50 percent of staff ambulatory movements and 14 percent of the surgical interruptions in the operating room are avoidable.

We have shown differences in perceived workload by staff role and surgery type and have determined that higher anticipation of requests among the team resulted in shorter operative time.

This set of studies has implications for the design of the operating room as well as training and scheduling interventions to improve team familiarity, workload and communication.

Location