Dr. Kris Chrouser is an Associate Professor in Urology and the S. Matthew Berge Research Professor at the University of Michigan and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.  Her research aims to maximize surgical outcomes by optimizing surgeon performance, intraoperative teamwork, and surgeon wellbeing. In addition to teaching operative urology, she also educates trainees in surgical ergonomics, non-technical skills, and improving workplace wellbeing by utilizing quality improvement techniques.  She serves as site director for the VA surgery CRQS program and is the High Reliability Organizational (HRO) Clinician Champion at the Ann Arbor VA.  

In this episode, Dr. Chrouser 

– Familiarizes us with the Surgical Stress Effects model that she developed to study the impact of various factors (including intangibles) that can influence surgical and procedural outcomes

– Discusses how surgeon/proceduralist discomfort can affect non-technical (and sometimes technical) performance and many safety events can be traced to issues with communication and other non-technical skills

– Explains why we don't have quantitative data regarding how physician work-related musculoskeletal (MSK) injury can affect patient outcomes i.e. lack of reporting

– Reviews the prevalence of work-related MSK injuries among urologists and shares tips and trick to help mitigate the risks

– Highlights the importance of an ”Occupational time-out” after the pre-incision time-out in order to help optimize the environmental factors

– Shares the (unpublished) data from her study implementing ergonomic best practices among OR teams

You can reach Dr. Chrouser via email at [email protected]

You can access the OR stretch app at https://orstretch.mayoclinic.org/

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