VR-based assessment and training of situation awareness in emergency care teams

Abstract

The research project builds on studies highlighting the relevance of social and cognitive skills, specifically the establishment and maintenance of (shared) Situation Awareness (SA), to high performance in dynamic acute care scenarios. Considering the known challenges of assessing and training SA at the team level, this project will develop a reliable method for the assessment of clinicians’ (shared) SA and identify relationships between SA and performance in emergency care teams. We will employ innovative technology, such as Extended Reality (XR), that offers new opportunities to incorporate the measurement of critical social-cognitive skills seamlessly into training scenarios and thus allows for more personalised and tailored training approaches. The goal of the project will be achieved through (1) conducting a systematic review of SA, (2) establishing an XR-based methodology to reliably assess SA during an XR-based emergency care scenario, (3) analysing and understanding situational cues that help or hinder SA in XR-based emergency care scenarios, (4) investigating the relationship between SA and several performance markers related to team performance and quality of care and (5) developing XR-based training to improve SA of healthcare providers in emergency care.