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Author M. Susan Hallbeck Ph.D and Bethany R. Lowndes Ph.D |
| Abstract Surgeons are reporting increased musculoskeletal disorders. Specifically, in the surgical suites at this institution, one surgeon had to permanently stop performing surgery due to work-related musculoskeletal disorders and others were in pain. It was determined that one intervention to be tested was periodic intraoperative microbreaks with exercises performed by surgeons within the sterile field. Previous research has shown self-reported improvement for the operative day when microbreaks are incorporated into the surgeon’s operating room (OR) routine. The initial work was done by having a 90-second microbreak leader in the room to lead calisthenic-type exercises that didn’t break scrub at convenient stopping points during surgery, about every 20 minutes. The surgeons and their teams loved having the microbreaks with exercises; however, their feedback was that the 20-minute period was not long enough and the exercises didn’t flow and lasted too long. From the researcher perspective, it also needed to be automated. Since tablets were password-protected and there were already networked computers in the ORs, a web-based application was created. New evidence-based stretches were created that shortened the duration while they focused on the surgeon’s primary target pain areas and an adjustable timer alert with snooze was added. This new GDPR compliant intraoperative stretch web-app was created and tested in ORs. This paper discusses the results of the internal roll-out. The free web-app is now available for dissemination. |
