BU Research Blog

In December 2020, the Royal College of Surgeons launched a set of Good Practice Guidelines on Improving Surgeon Wellbeing after adverse events. The guidelines were developed in collaboration with the Bournemouth University Surgical Wellbeing Research Team. A key recommendation in the guidelines was the development of a ‘First Responder’ system within NHS Trusts in the UK, through which experienced surgeons could provide timely support to their surgical colleagues involved in adverse surgical events. To this end, in November 2021, two members of the BU team – Professor Kevin Turner, Consultant Urological Surgeon and Dr Helen Bolderston, Clinical Psychologist – delivered a training workshop for a group of consultant surgeons within University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundations Trust. This development will form the basis of the first UK surgeons’ First Responder scheme.

Since then, the Bournemouth University Surgeon Wellbeing research team has also published the results from a UK survey looking at the impact of adverse events on surgeons. This project was unique in focusing specifically on experiences of adverse events of UK surgeons, and in exploring the varying impact of surgical errors and complications. An article summarising this work has just been published in The British Journal of Surgery:

Turner, K., Bolderston, H., Thomas, K., Greville-Harris, M., Withers, C & McDougall, S. (2022) Impact of adverse events on surgeons, British Journal of Surgery, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjs/znab447

The ‘supporting surgeon well-being’ research team is based in the Department of Psychology at BU and at the Royal Bournemouth Hospitals NHS Trust.  To find out more about the work of the team, please visit its website at: https://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/projects/impacts-adverse-events-surgeon-wellbeing