Introduction of an Operating Room Black Box to Identify, Analyse and Prevent Errors in the Vascular Hybrid Room

The "OR Black box", an inclusive multiport data capturing system has been developed and successfully used for detailed analysis of laparoscopic surgical procedures. A pilot study has shown that this system can be successfully installed in the hybrid room at Ghent University Hospital and used for detailed analysis of intra-operative errors and radiation safety issues in endovascular procedures.

Secondary analysis of pilot study data via direct video coding assessed the relationship between leadership style of the surgeon and team behavior and possible fluctuations during surgery.

This novel approach allows a prospective objective assessment of human and environmental factors as well as measurement of errors, events and outcomes. In this study, the aim is to use the acquired knowledge to characterize a chain of events, identify high-risk interventions and identify areas for improvement, both on an organizational, team or individual level.

Hypothesis: non-technical skills, environmental factors and teamwork in the hybrid room correlate with surgical technical performance and error rates. Furthermore, we hypothesize that incidents and adverse events can be tracked to a chain of errors that is influenced by technical and non-technical skills as well as environmental factors.