Human behavior in operating rooms parallels primate patterns of hierarchy and gender

July 2, 2018, Emory University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A team led by a researcher who customarily studies nonhuman primate behavior has found that humans working in operating rooms (ORs) follow the same general primate patterns of hierarchy and gender.

Their results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in a paper titled "Ethological Observations of Social Behavior in the Operating Room."

In a project they term 'operating room primatology,' the researchers used ethological observation methods to record all social interactions within teams in three ORs during 200 surgical procedures. Previous studies of behavior in health care teams have mostly relied on questionnaires, rather than records of actual behavior.

Ethology is the study of humans and other species from an evolutionary perspective, and ethological observations are live recordings of everything that happens in a group over a certain time period.

The study reached three major conclusions: (1) conflicts were directed mostly down the hierarchy between members several ranks apart; (2) conflict and cooperation in the OR varied by gender, with less cooperation when the OR team included more male members; and (3) there was less conflict and more cooperation if the attending surgeon's gender (male or female) differed from that of the majority of the team.

The study's authors note that ORs are staffed by hierarchical, mixed-gender clinical teams that engage not only in technical communications, but also a variety of social interactions.

Read more at: