Knowledge and Skill Possible Ability to Represent a Rescue for Personnel Health in the Operating Room

Implication for health policy/practice/research/medical education: This viewpoint provides a poignant summary of the main features and countermeasures for stress, involving operating room personnel. It emphasizes why stress in this environment is so common and so challenging to prevent, and what action should be taken to limit its negative impact. Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it.' David Starr Jordan, 1851-1931. Stress, including psychological stress, is a person's response to a stressor, such as an environmental condition or a stimulus. According to the stressful event, stress may have a mixed, negative and positive, impact (1, 2). Although there is occupational stress in all working environments , those related to human health have a great importance (3). Many people feel stressed at work and not all stress is equal, since not all of it is equally harmful. Research exploring and correlating stress and performance has typically been centered on individual members of staff in the operating room (OR) (4). The operating room is the only location within a hospital where two coequal physicians regularly, and simultaneously, share responsibility for one patient. This often involves interpersonal conflicts, because in many cases, areas of responsibility are poorly delineated and a broad range of professionals have overlapping competencies (5). Within surgery, the operating room is a team setting in which players, consisting of professionals with various expertise, are expected to function optimally (6). The professional figure of nurses is crucial in this context. Nurses represent the frontline professional staff among this organization, playing an important role in the delivery of high-quality healthcare services (7). The profession of nursing acts as a double source of stress due to the nature of the work itself and the inadequate number of nurses, disproportional to the high workload (8). Recent studies have shown that job-related stress is an important factor, predicting staff satisfaction mainly in the operating room (9). Yosra Azizpour et al. have expressed an interesting viewpoint on the world of the operating room and stress factors , examining the relationship between workplace environment and stress among operating room personnel, in a large set of teaching hospitals (10). A total of 63 individuals among the operating room personnel (operating room technicians, anesthesia technicians and nurses) were interviewed through two questionnaires. The results showed that higher levels of stress were secondary to the fear of being infected …