Safer Surgery part 13. There have been few research investigations into how highly trained doctors and nurses work together to achieve safe and efficient anaesthesia and surgery. While there have been major advances in surgical and anaesthetic procedures, there are still significant risks for patients during operations and adverse events are not unknown. Due to rising concern about patient safety, surgeons and anaesthetists have looked for ways of minimising adverse events. | 94 Safer Surgery Exemplar behaviours and demonstrative scenarios for each sub-team stage of a procedure are fully described in the OTAS user manual Undre and Healey 2006 freely available for research use at http . Further Empirical Testing Urological Cases Undre et al. 2007a This study aimed to further assess feasibility of the revised OTAS tool usefulness of the revisions reliability in the behavioural scoring. The study also aimed to compare general surgery with urology elective procedures. As in the previous study care was taken to inform staff about the study and to reassure them that data would be used for research purposes only. Methods Data were collected in 50 urological surgery operations in two operating theatres one in our own institution central London teaching hospital and the other at a treatment centre. Twenty operations were the first operation of the list the remaining 30 operations were the second or subsequent operation. The typical mix of operations contained cystoscopy ureteroscopy ureterorenoscopy transurethral resection of the prostate TURP and short procedures such as orchidectomy vasectomy and circumcisions. Data were collected from procedures that lasted 30-240 minutes. Tasks and behaviours were assessed from Pre-op Stage 1 to Post-op Stage 2. The last OTAS stage was not feasible to assess. In six additional procedures behavioural ratings only were collected by two psychologist observers to assess inter-observer reliability. Results and Comments Task completion Table urology columns presents the task completion rates. Overall task completion was higher in urology than in general surgery. The pattern of task completion rates between different types of tasks was strikingly similar with patient tasks showing highest completion rates followed by equipment provisions and communication tasks. In addition some variability was observed in urology theatres too with significantly lower levels of equipment tasks in the Pre-op .
