WS2-08: MAKING RESIDENTS’ AVERAGE PERFORMANCE EXCELLENT: LEARN HOW TO OPTIMIZE TRAINEES’ PERFORMANCE THROUGH MENTAL SKILLS TRAINING
Nicholas E Anton, MS, Dimitrios Stefanidis, MD, PhD; Indiana University School of Medicine

Excessive stress in the operating room has been identified as a significant barrier to surgeons’ technical and nontechnical performance. In a recent study to identify the impact and sources of surgeons’ stress, 40% of responding surgeons reported that they had witnessed a surgical error that directly resulted from the primary surgeon’s stress level. Surgical residents may be vulnerable to experience performance deterioration due to excessive stress, as their inexperience may prevent them from developing effective stress-coping strategies. Additionally, intraoperative errors resulting from stress could ultimately compromise patient safety. Accordingly, it is necessary to identify strategies to optimize residents’ performance during challenging clinical situations.  

Mental skills curricula (MSC), which are comprised of psychological strategies that enable performers to reliably perform to the highest of their abilities in spite of potential barriers to performance (e.g., stress, loss of focus, etc.), have been effectively implemented to better maintain surgery residents’ surgical skill under heightened stress.

This workshop will focus on identifying the potential cognitive barriers to residents’ surgical performance, and providing surgical faculty with effective strategies to educate residents on how to optimize their performance during challenging clinical situations. Participants will get the opportunity to practice mental skills during the workshop, and collaboratively identify how to integrate mental skills in resident education at their institution. The ultimate goal of this workshop is to provide surgical faculty with effective skills to be personally used and taught immediately upon returning to their institutions.

The learning objectives of this workshop are to help participants be able to:

1. Identify the cognitive barriers to residents’ successful surgical performance

2. Describe the benefits of implementing mental skills training with residents

3. Acquire techniques that can be taught to residents to optimize their performance during dynamic and challenging clinical situations

4. Collaboratively identify the possible integration of these skills in surgical training to maximize resident learning