Influence of additional personal protective equipment on team performance in simulation-based emergency scenarios: a randomised controlled trial
Abstract
We designed a prospective, randomised, controlled, high-fidelity simulation-based study, using a scenario of a medical crisis resulting in the need of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). The study protocol was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04742426) and approved by the Research Ethics Board of the Third Faculty of Medicine of Charles University in Prague.
All participants gave prospective, written informed consent. We recruited 22 doctors and 44 nurses from the Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine for the study, all experienced in caring for ventilated patients with COVID-19.
The mean age of participants was 30 (sd 6) yr, the median length of practice was 3 yr, and 79% of participants were women. Participants were divided into 22 teams of three participants, each team consisting of one doctor and two nurses.
This powered the study to 80% probability of detecting a 25% difference in Team Emergency Assessment Measure (TEAM) scores8 (the primary outcome) between groups with a significance level of P<0.05.