In the operating room (OR), opaque drapes are hung between the anesthesia workstation and the operating table. Because OR teams are transient and hierarchical, social order is continuously being negotiated around this partition. We hypothesized that drape transparency, a tool for reimagining the physical and symbolic confines of the OR, might alter behavior. Due to the proximity of anesthesia providers to the drape, we examined how the drape’s transparency affected “social” and “case-related” communication between them and clinicians from surgery and nursing. We observed 58 surgical cases using an OR ethogram to document interprofessional communications (344 exchanges) involving the anesthesia provider. The effect of the type drape showed a statistically significant, GzMLM F(1, 342) = 4.924, p = .027, increase only for “social” communication. The frequency of “social” communication, known to enhance collegiality, was greater when a transparent drape was substituted for the opaque drape (34.9% vs. 21.3%, respectively).
