Dr. Kyi Phyu Nyein: RCSI Profile
30/11/2023
Advances in medical technology cannot be made without advances in human communication and teamwork: this is a key takeaway from the work of Dr Kyi Phyu Nyein, an Organisational Psychologist who is working at the RCSI SIM in the ever-changing and ever-advancing field of robotic surgery. Her work combines simulation with team dynamics and the implementation of technology in healthcare.
Nyein is a Marie Skłodowska–Curie Actions Research Fellow at the SIM Centre, where she is researching teamwork and communication in robotic surgical teams. “My PhD is in industrial and organisational psychology,” she explains, “the study of human behaviours, attitudes, and performance specifically at the workplace.” Her research areas include trust and team dynamics, cross cultural differences, and simulation training. If she had to pick a specific area, she adds, “I’d say I'm a team researcher. I'm motivated by the questions of how can we make teams effective, how we can help them trust and work together effectively.”
Robotic surgery has been rapidly integrated into surgical practices in the last couple of decades, and alongside the many benefits of this new technology, there are certain challenges that Nyein’s research addresses. “In traditional open surgery you’ll see everybody is around the patient on the patient table, whereas in robotic surgery they have a robotic system in the operating theatre. The surgeon is sitting at a console away from the surgical team and patient.” She is exploring how team and communication dynamics change because of this different setup.
Nyein decided to pursue a role in RCSI as it would give her the opportunity to see the impact of her research and apply it in the real world: when working at the Ohio State, she was introduced to the field of simulation. One of her main projects was training healthcare providers in simulation trainings using virtual reality to provide care for patients with social determinants of health, such as non-English speaking patients and patients with dementia. She had wanted to incorporate technology into her research and discovered robotic surgery, which she notes, is currently a space of huge growth. “I wanted to learn more about team dynamics in robotic surgery and how we can incorporate it into simulation training, so that’s where my interest started. And at RCSI, I am continuing my research in that space.”
She only recently arrived in Ireland and is currently finalising her research plan. It’s clear to see that she has been busy from day one: in her first week at the end of September, Nyein participated in European Researchers’ Night by presenting at RCSI’s poster session, outlining her research in robotic surgery and the goals for her current project. Once she has received ethics approval, her next step will be to start conducting on-the-ground research. This will involve talking with personnel at hospitals, conducting interviews online, and observing activity in operating theatres.
Moving to Ireland has given Nyein a chance to “move outside my comfort zone”: “I knew that I wanted to get more international experience,” she says, “because it challenges you to think differently and grow. So, I started asking colleagues to introduce me to anyone they knew outside the US, in Europe for example, and they introduced me to people and those people introduced me to their colleagues.” That’s how she established contact with RCSI’s Director of Simulation, Dr Claire Condron.
Dr Nyein and Dr Claire Condron
She has joined the researchers, health professions educators, and clinicians in RCSI’s Robotics Surgery Research Group, put together by Condron. She hopes that results from her project will be used as training materials in simulation to train surgical teams who are learning to communicate effectively. As well as receiving academic and career support from Condron and members of the Research Group, Nyein is also in communication with her mentors from the US, particularly her PhD advisor, Prof Jessica Wildman from Florida Institute of Technology, and her mentor from the Ohio State, Prof Megan Gregory.
She highlights how her current position enables her to conduct interdisciplinary research: when she and her collaborators publish, she explains, “we have to decide who our main target of audience is and whether we want to publish in psychology or healthcare journals. And when it’s time to plan for the next step in my career, I’ll consider both psychology departments and medical schools, as they have different opportunities as well as criteria they use to evaluate performance.” As a result, she has found it useful to talk to those in RCSI with differing backgrounds as well as checking in with her US mentors in organisational psychology. Indeed, it is clear from listening that her research is creating new connections between these disciplines. “Healthcare is so complex. When we bring together people from different disciplines, they bring different perspectives to some of the same problems,” she notes. “I think that makes healthcare better.”
Indeed, her transatlantic connections mean she is in an ideal position to disseminate research in both Ireland and the US. Nyein and her colleagues from the Ohio State are planning a virtual symposium on robotic surgery. “The Ohio State has a very well-developed robotic surgery programme. They perform 12 to 13 thousand robotic surgeries in a six-month period. So, I think it will be good to share knowledge and see if there’s any opportunity for collaborations on a cross-cultural scale.” She believes RSCI is in a strong position to influence the discipline internationally too, thanks to its network of collaborators in robotic surgery education and training in Europe.
What is she expecting for the future of her field? “I think we'll use more advanced technology like virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Remember the project I mentioned earlier where we provided simulation trainings using virtual reality to better engage with patients with social determinants of health? It started out as a pilot programme, and it still continues to be funded and run today. I'm not aware of such a programme in Ireland yet. So, I think that's going to be the new trend in the next few years.”
Nyein looks forward to being part of these advancements in robotic surgery at RCSI. She will continue to look for future opportunities to step out of her comfort zone while finding ways to forge her career path.
Dr. Kyi Phyu Nyein
Kyi Phyu Nyein is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Research Fellow in the Simulation Centre at RCSI. Previously, she was a postdoctoral scholar in the Center for the Advancement of Team Science, Analytics, and Systems Thinking in Health Services and Implementation Science Research (CATALYST) at the Ohio State University College of Medicine. She received her PhD and MS in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Florida Institute of Technology, MA in Organizational Sciences with Human Resources Management concentration from George Washington University, and BSc in Psychology from Davidson College. Her current research interests are trust and team dynamics, simulation trainings, cultural influences, and their interactions with technology on human behaviours and performance in healthcare and beyond.