Human Error, Safety and Systems Development

Abstract

Ergonomic criteria are receiving increasing attention from designers but their applications don't ensure that technology matches the system's constraints and its reliability. The aim of this paper is to study how robotic surgery induces fundamental changes in the collective work using communication as a sign of the adaptation processes. First, we compared verbal communication between surgeons in two conditions (laparoscopy and robotic surgery). Secondly, we compared three teams with different level of expertise with the robotic system on a repeated surgery act in order to identify permanent and transitory changes. Third, we analyzed conversion cases. We showed more acts of communication with the robotic system. The content analyses of communication revealed a profound change of the structure of the task that requires explicit collaborative modes. Although our sample is small, our results can be extended in other domains concerned with telework.