Towards Supporting Intraoperative Coordination and Entrustment in Surgical Faculty-Resident Dyads: Looking Together ≠ Seeing the Same Thing

Laparoscopic surgeries require a high degree of visuo-spatial coordination between attending and resident surgeons. The challenge is intensified when surgeons communicate verbally using visual cues. Most prior work in the space supports attending surgeons to give clearer instructions to residents. However, in order to achieve intraoperative success, shared understanding, coordination and trust between faculty-resident dyads is essential. Our work focuses on unpacking both attending and resident surgeons’ experiences during intraoperative operations. We perform an interview study with 6 attending and 3 resident surgeons, in which we ask participants to share their thoughts on the utility and feasibility of capturing surgical dyads’ joint visual attention (JVA) during live surgeries. We find that attending and resident surgeons have contrasting and complementary views about autonomy, communication and coordination during surgeries. We also see positive attitudes towards capturing surgeons’ visual attention during live surgeries and using the data to support communication, coordination and instruction.