E-learning Methods in the Knowledge Transfer Between Surgical Tools Manufacturers and Hospital. A Case Study from Laparoscopy

Abstract: Laparoscopy is one of the rapidly developing domains in surgery. Together with this development it can be observed the systematic growth of tools and equipment complexity as well as changes in surgical procedures and the modes of using surgical instruments. Particularly the development and complexity of surgical tools is related to their shape, fields of using them, tendency to integration functions of several tools and creating multifunctional tools. Such direction of surgical tools development is positive, especially for patients, because of better efficiency and effectiveness of surgery or lower risk of infections, but it could cause certain problems for medical staff both for surgeons and scrub nurses. These problems concern (1) ergonomic failures what `can be lead to fatigue or even musculoskeletal disorders of surgeons and (2) knowledge advantage for medical staff who have to absorb difficult and multidisciplinary knowledge of how to use the surgical laparoscopic instruments in proper and efficiently way.The reason of mentioned problems are on the one hand the gaps in ergonomic knowledge among designers and manufacturers, on the other hand the poor knowledge transfer between manufacturers and end-users in hospitals.Taking into account these problematic aspect of designing and using laparoscopic tools, the solutions based on e-learning methods for better communication and knowledge transfer between manufacturers and hospitals are proposed and described on the example of case study. Particularly e-learning methods enable understanding the ergonomic needs and the expectations of end-users as well as are the opportunity to include surgeons in tools designing process.

Keywords: Knowledge Transfer, Laparoscopic Instruments, Ergonomics, Design Process, e-Learning

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe100389

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