Black box

Imagine you, a medical student, are observing a surgical procedure and everything is going to plan. In fact, it's one of those times when you are not concentrating fully and your mind is wandering, “What am I going to do this Friday night?” Suddenly the anaesthetist is looking a bit panicky and is beginning to inject more drugs, trying to adjust the endotracheal tube, and decipher the monitors at the same time. Meanwhile, the surgeon, his assistant, and the surgical senior house officer are huddled around the patient, rapidly muttering commands at each other and ordering increasing numbers of instruments from the theatre nurse. The nurse, in turn, is asking other nurses in the operating theatre to get more equipment from other theatres and supply cupboards. The patient's condition is deteriorating; the staff are becoming more agitated. A more senior anaesthetist is called to help improve the patient's critical situation; and still confusion is apparent in the operating theatre.

The life of the patient seems to be at risk, but you don't know how this happened and what information was available and in what order. Was it a failure of equipment, a lack of communication, or a failure of the system? What if a technological solution could provide the data to allow some of these questions to be answered? A solution that might also be used to: allow analysis and feedback during surgical team training; allow research into staff interaction; …