About SurgILab

Welcome to SurgILab! Our lab was formed in 2016 in collaboration with the UMKC School of Medicine. Our research aims to understand how patient safety is threatened in the Operating Room and how to make surgery safer. As surgeons and researchers, we should investigate every surgical error, no matter how minor, and develop novel preventive solutions.  We aim to approach this complex problem through multiple methodologies, including ethnography and film study of the operating room. We collaborate with operating room providers, human factors scientists, biomedical engineers, cognitive psychologists, linguistics and semantics experts, ethnographers, and experts in acoustic and psychoacoustic methods. Our goal is to reduce the surgical error rate As Low As Reasonably Possible (ALARP). Our research is generously supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the University of Missouri and the Victor and Caroline Schutte Foundation.

Mission

The mission of the Surgical Innovation Lab is to investigate what threatens patient safety in the operating room. We approach this complex problem through multiple methodologies, including bioengineering, and interprofessional and observational approaches. We are committed to involving learners from UMKC and strive to mentor each student's ability to acquire and critically interpret research data and apply it to theories of surgical learning and patient safety.

Team

Meet our researchers

About our team members

Our teams  are comprised of medical and non-medical researchers, educators, students, and scientists. We work together to identify and understand the problem, and then create a solution. 

Meet Our Team