Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents a state-of-the-art perspective on a new area of psychological and medical research where social scientists are engaged with clinicians in collaborative projects to study surgical teams at work in hospital operating theatres. It describes research with new measurement tools that have been designed to record and rate the behaviours and skills of individuals and/or teams when working in the anaesthetic room or the operating theatre. The book provides a broader range of different kinds of observational studies of theatre teams or individual clinicians in action during the induction or recovery from anaesthesia or engaged in surgical operations. High risk workplaces do not provide the easiest of research subjects but they are an important domain for psychological research, as B. Wilpert noted: Psychology in high hazard organizations is an unusual conception, a field which is only gingerly approached by our discipline.