Handbook of soft skills training using virtual reality and serious games for surgical teams in the operating room

This handbook assists to Continuos and Vocational Education and Training (CVET) teachers, trainers and their institutions to organize training activities on soft skills for surgical and endoscopy teams, so the main target groups are health professionals working in the operating and endoscopy room (OR): surgeons, endoscopists, nurses and anaesthetists, who want to improve their soft skills.

The handbook consists of two main parts. The first part focuses on the theoretical and practical background of the 5 main cognitive skills (leadership, decision making, situation awareness, teamwork, communication and interaction) and on the traditional ways of surgical training. Furthermore, this part introduces the surgical team members, their tasks and responsibilities and the potential of information technology (IT) and virtual reality (VR) to be integrated into surgical education. Each chapter follows the same structure. First, the theoretical background of each skills is presented, based on the recent literature, and then the most important competences needed to acquire the skills are described from the practical perspective, using examples from the real life. Infoboxes summarise the most important information as a takehome message and these are illustrated with photos of life in the operating room.

The workbook-like second part focuses even more on practice, using 10 real-life examples to illustrate the importance of cognitive skills in surgery and the operating room. Each case study focuses on the main and one or two secondary soft skills. The practical cases are presented in the same structure, aimed at including the different elements and details that are necessary to put the case into practice. Brief theoretical information highlights the soft skills to be trained in the practical case, together with a brief introduction on its relevance. After presenting the case, the chapter describes the training approaches, the needed resources and offers a possible assessment methodologies to be used.