Situational Awareness in Anesthesiolog

This study was designed to explore how a community of anesthesiologists understood situational awareness (SA), and their thoughts on how it was learned, taught, and assessed. Eighteen anesthesiologists participated in semi-structured interviews. Constructivist grounded theory techniques were used in a thematic analysis of interview transcripts, with group meetings held to develop emerging themes. Respondents displayed an understanding of SA using both clinical and everyday life examples. SA was felt to be important but formal definitions of SA were lacking and SA was not explicitly discussed. SA was learned informally through increasing independence, role-modeling, and reflection on errors, and formally through simulation. Respondents did teach about SA but found it difficult to give meaningful feedback to trainees. Although acknowledgment of SA may be evolving, it appeared that SA was a crucial but tacit concept for the anesthesiologists in this study. Faculty development is required to improve teaching and assessment of SA.