Assessing competence in technical skills of theatre nurses in India and Sweden : Evaluation of an observational tool

Sammanfattning: Surgical processes are a complex function of a number of inter-related factors that include individual skills, team working and operating theatre environment. Individual skills can be divided to technical and non-technical skills. This distinction between technical and non-technical skills is rather recent in the healthcare literature. There are studies made about assessing non-technical skills performed in the operating theatre but studies made to assess theatre nurses‘ technical skills have been lacking until recently. The aim of this study is to evaluate clinical applicability of a newly developed observation tool in different contexts and through observing describe similarities or differences between theatre nursing. The observations in the present study are structured with a newly developed observational tool that is developed to assess technical skills of a theatre nurse. The two authors of this study performed the data collection simultaneously at different operation departments. The present study makes evident that the technical skills required of a theatre nurse are considerably different in two different countries. Therefore, it is difficult to use an observational tool without modifying it according to local routines.