Determination of opinions, experiences and perceived stress levels of the operating room nurses about robotic surgery

This research aims to target the views, experiences and perceived stress levels of operating room nurses working in hospitals that practice RS, regardless of their robotic surgery (RS) experience. The research is a descriptive study. Ethics committee approval, institutional permission and written consent were obtained for the study. The sample included 242 volunteer operating room nurses working in eight institutions performing robotic surgery or in Istanbul, which granted permission to perform study at their hospitals. The data were collected via a questionnaire, using the Nurse Information Form which includes the demographic characteristics of the nurses, the opinion and experience questionnaire about robotic surgery, and the perceived stress scale form. The collected data were evaluated in computer environment using Shapiro-Wilk test, independent groups t-test, Pearson Chi-Square Test, Fisher Freeman Halton Test, Fisher Exact Test and Mann Whitney-U Test. Of the two hundred and forty-two participants, 39.3% (95) had operating room nursing certificate and 28.1% (68) had RS training. Of the 68 people with RS training, 4 were not working in the RS operating room. Of the 68 nurses who received RS training, 43 (63%) received their training from an experienced operating room nurse, and 14 (20.6%) benefited from Certified RS training. The answer "Certified robotic surgery training" ranked first with 85.9% among the answers given by 64 nurses working in the RS operating room to the question of how you would like to receive RS training. Participants with RS experience had a positive view of RS. No statistically significant difference was found between the groups in the analysis performed with the perceived stress scale (PSS). There is a need for structured certified training programs for the training of nurses working with RC systems. It may be appropriate to conduct a new study to investigate the reasons for the lack of significant difference between groups in PSS. Key words: Operating room, nursing, robotic surgery, stress