Understanding the Cognitive Demands, Skills, and Assessment Approaches for Endotracheal Intubation: Cognitive Task Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Proper airway management is an essential skill for hospital personnel and rescue services to learn, as it is a priority for the care of patients who are critically ill. It is essential that providers be properly trained and competent in performing endotracheal intubation (ETI), a widely used technique for airway management. Several metrics have been created to measure competence in the ETI procedure. However, there is still a need to improve ETI training and evaluation, including a focus on collaborative research across medical specialties, to establish greater competence-based training and assessments. Training and evaluating ETI should also incorporate modern, evidence-based procedural training methodologies. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to use the cognitive task analysis (CTA) framework to identify the cognitive demands and skills needed to proficiently perform a task, elucidate differences between novice and expert performance, and provide an understanding of the workload associated with a task. The CTA framework was applied to ETI to capture a broad view of task and training requirements from the perspective of multiple medical specialties. METHODS: A CTA interview was developed based on previous research into the tasks and evaluation methods of ETI. A total of 6 experts from across multiple medical specialties were interviewed to capture the cognitive skills required to complete this task. Interviews were coded for main themes, subthemes in each category, and differences among specialties. These findings were compiled into a skills tree to identify the training needs and cognitive requirements of each task. RESULTS: The CTA revealed that consistency in equipment setup and planning, through talk or think-aloud methods, is critical to successfully mastering ETI. These factors allow the providers to avoid errors due to patient characteristics and environmental factors. Variation among specialties derived primarily from the environment in which ETI is performed, subsequent treatment plans, and available resources. Anesthesiology typically represented the most ideal cases with a large potential for training, whereas paramedics faced the greatest number of constraints based on the environment and available equipment. CONCLUSIONS: Although the skills tree cannot perfectly capture the complexity and detail of all potential cases, it provided insight into the nuanced skills and training techniques used to prepare novices for the variability they may find in practice. Importantly, the CTA identified ways in which challenges faced by novices may be overcome and how this training can be applied to future cases. By making these implicit skills and points of variation explicit, they can be better translated into teachable details. These findings are consistent with previous studies looking at developing improved assessment metrics for ETI and expanding upon their work by delving into methods of feedback and strategies to assist novices.

Influence of hierarchy on risk communication during robot-assisted surgery: a preliminary study.

INTRODUCTION: A hierarchical structure is where all individuals are organized according to importance and are subordinate to a single person. In the operating room (OR), this structure may negatively impact the quality of communication and jeopardize patient safety. We examined how the surgical team's hierarchical relationships affect the frequency and timing of risk communication, and their influence on situational awareness (SA) in the OR. METHODS: Overhead cameras and lapel microphones were used to record the OR environment. Recordings and transcriptions of 10 robot-assisted prostatectomies were examined for risk utterances among team members. Utterances were classified by sender-recipient exchange, timing (determined by phrasing to be proactive or reactive to an error/negative event), and the Oxford Non-Technical Skills (NOTECHS) SA score. Surgeon's and trainee surgeon's utterances were classified by their on-console status. Chi-square tests were used to determine associations between dependent factors, and ANOVAs were used to evaluate the effect of hierarchy and timing on NOTECHS score. RESULTS: Of 4,583 examined utterances, 329 (7%) were risk-related. There was no significant difference in utterance frequency based on hierarchical status of sender and recipient (p = 0.16). Utterances made by the surgeon or trainee surgeon had higher NOTECHS scores when off versus on the console (scores: 1.8 vs 2.4, p < 0.01). These utterances were more reactive on the console (32%) and proactive off the console (28%). Proactive utterances had higher NOTECHS scores than reactive utterances (scores: 2.5 vs 1.8, p < 0.01). CONCLUSION: The surgical hierarchy significantly impacted the frequency of risk communication within the OR. Timing and on-console status further influenced the efficacy of risk communication.

Opportunities and Recommendations for Improving Medication Safety: Understanding the Medication Management System in Primary Care Through an Abstraction Hierarchy.

BACKGROUND: Despite making great strides in improving the treatment of diseases, the minimization of unintended harm by medication therapy continues to be a major hurdle facing the health care system. Medication error and prescription of potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) represent a prevalent source of harm to patients and are associated with increased rates of adverse events, hospitalizations, and increased health care costs. Attempts to improve medication management systems in primary care have had mixed results. Implementation of new interventions is difficult because of complex contextual factors within the health care system. Abstraction hierarchy (AH), the first step in cognitive work analysis (CWA), is used by human factors practitioners to describe complex sociotechnical systems. Although initially intended for the nuclear power domain and interface design, AH has been used successfully to aid the redesign of numerous health care systems such as the design of decision support tools, mobile patient monitoring apps, and a telephone triage system. OBJECTIVE: This paper aims to refine our understanding of the primary care office in relation to a patient's medication through the development of an AH. Emphasis was placed on the elements related to medication safety to provide guidance for the design of a safer medication management system in primary care. METHODS: The AH development was guided by the methodology used by seminal CWA literature. It was initially developed by 2 authors and later fine-tuned by an expert panel of clinicians, social scientists, and a human factors engineer. It was subsequently refined until an agreement was reached. A means-ends analysis was performed and described for the nodes of interest. The model represents the primary care office space through functional purposes, values and priorities, function-related purposes, object-related processes, and physical objects. RESULTS: This model depicts the medication management system at various levels of abstraction. The resulting components must be balanced and coordinated to provide medical treatment with limited health care resources. Understanding the physical and informational constraints on activities that occur in a primary care office depicted in the AH defines areas in which medication safety can be improved. CONCLUSIONS: Numerous means-ends relationships were identified and analyzed. These can be further evaluated depending on the specific needs of the user. Recommendations for optimizing a medication management system in a primary care facility were made. Individual practices can use AH for clinical redesign to improve prescribing and deprescribing practices.