Understanding Language Use in Surgery

This is a 2-year project. In this project, I examined the instructions given by the expert surgeons, the challenges for novice surgeons in following these instructions, and the ways in which the surgeons interact with each other.

The most interesting finding is that novices prefer to use actions in presenting their judgments, compared with verbal utterances. The experts, on the other hand, verbally direct novices' attention and manage the process, and use actions to reinforce their control of the decision-making process.

The findings from this project led to the design of gesturing tools for intraoperative communication.

Please refer to the papers for the detailed information:

Feng, Y., Mentis, H. M. (2017). Improving common ground development in surgical training through talk and action. In AMIA Annual Symposium 2017 Proceedings. American Medical Informatics Association.

Feng, Y., Mentis, H. (2016). Supporting Common Ground Development in the Operation Room through Information Display Systems. In AMIA Annual Symposium Proceedings (Vol. 2016, p. 1774). American Medical Informatics Association.

Feng, Y., Wong, C., Park, A., & Mentis, H. M. (2016). Taxonomy of instructions given to residents in laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Surgical endoscopy, 30(3), 1073-1077.

Feng, Y., Zahiri, H., Mentis, H. M. (2015). Challenges for residents in following instructions in laparoscopic surgery, presented at AMIA Annual Symposium 2015, San Francisco, CA.