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Effects of Stress on Team Coordination and Performance

NCT05798052 · Status: UNKNOWN · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 108

Last updated 2023-04-04

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Healthcare teams often encounter challenging circumstances where they must deliver high-quality care. For a team to function effectively, its members must not only be individually competent, but they also need to collaborate and cooperate using their respective expertise. Such teams often work under high stress situations, where they need to make high stakes decisions under conditions of uncertainty, time-sensitivity and variable levels of control. Research shows that such emergency situations provoke stress responses in individuals, which can impair attention, memory, reasoning, and decision-making. However, it remains unclear how individual-level stress responses influence team communication, coordination, and performance. The aims of this study are to a) compare team coordination, communication, and performance in low stress versus high stress simulated emergency situations; and b) characterize the relationship between teams' stress profiles and the teams' performance and coordination. The study will be a within-subject experimental design, with teams serving as their own controls. Teams of emergency medicine residents and nurses will participate in two simulation scenarios: one in a low stress condition, and the other in a high stress condition (counterbalanced across the teams).

Conditions

  • Stress Reaction
  • Stress, Psychological
  • Stress, Physiological

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Psychological stressors added to simulated clinical scenarios.

In both low and high stress scenario versions, the underlying mechanism of disease or injury will be identical, as will be the expected clinical management of the situation. Known stressors9,10 will be added to the scenarios, ensuring ecological validity (stressors that occur in real life). The stressors will include a) socio-evaluative stressors (presence of other with ability to negatively judge); b) increases in the severity of the situation (unstable patient); c) increases in the stakes (e.g. woman in early stages of pregnancy), d) noise, as well as e) unexpected brief complications (e.g. brief equipment challenge).

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • University of Ottawa

    collaborator OTHER

  • Ottawa Hospital Research Institute

    lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
Masking
SINGLE
Model
CROSSOVER

Eligibility

Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2023-04-30
Primary Completion
2023-12-31
Completion
2024-04-30

Countries

  • Canada

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT05798052 on ClinicalTrials.gov