Coaching
Coaching is non-judgemental collaborative support with professional and personal life by an expert to help:
• Improve surgical decision-making, performance and patient outcomes
• Improve communication, training and teamwork skills
• Plan and execute a career transition
• Improve work-life balance
• Achieve goals
Why do surgeons need coaching? Here’s an excellent answer from Atul Gawande. For him, it immediately brought “…a whole other level of awareness.”
Despite the intense and sometimes overwhelming pressures of being a surgeon, any surgeon who is serious about performance should be able to achieve performance expertise – whoever they are, wherever they are from and whatever stage they are at.
For over a decade, I have coached many surgeons across specialties, grades, and countries. Some began coaching after reaching the point of wanting to quit surgery
Attendee Testimonials
Client outcomes include improved overall performance, reduction in stress, better interpersonal relationships, optimum confidence, higher job satisfaction and many other personal and professional improvements. Through coaching sessions, surgeons feeling despondent have regained competency and are now performing well with good job satisfaction. Others have attained mastery in their chosen field.
Coaching can nurture a surgeon’s potential to be ready for the challenges that they will face in their career. It aims to make the most of efforts the surgeon has already taken and use all available resources to achieve an individual goals.
My approach to team performance focuses on the building blocks of collective performance, helping to establish a strong individual and collective psychological foundation with the right habits to drive ongoing development.
These benefits have been supported by my own research (1) as well as that of others (2), which has shown that surgical coaching interventions have a significantly positive impact on surgeons’ perception and attitudes, their technical and nontechnical skills, and performance measures. Further evidence of coaching efficacy is provided below.
Surgeons by nature are focused on achieving good outcomes and their goals. But expert surgeons have a better understanding of how to do this consistently, namely by focusing their attention on the process of decision-making and performance.
Decoding the process of expert performance is one of the principles of surgical coaching.
Surgical coaching can be delivered on-line either individually or in groups. For more information, please get in touch here.
References
- Cragg J, Mushtaq F, Lal N, et al. Surgical cognitive simulation improves real-world surgical performance: randomized study. BJS Open. 2021;5(3):zrab003. doi:10.1093/bjsopen/zrab003
- Min H, Morales DR, Orgill D, Smink DS, Yule S. Systematic review of coaching to enhance surgeons’ operative performance. Surgery. 2015;158(5):1168-1191. doi:10.1016/j.surg.2015.03.007
Evidence that Coaching Works
A collection of papers and studies in support of surgical coaching.
Surgical Metacognition
Smarter Decision-making for Surgeons
by
Dr Uttam Shiralker
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