Trauma resuscitation: can team behaviours in the prearrival period predict resuscitation performance?

Optimising team performance is critical in paediatric trauma resuscitation. Previous studies in aviation and surgery link performance to behaviours in the prearrival period.

To determine if patterns of human behaviour in the prearrival period of a simulated trauma resuscitation is predictive of resuscitation performance.

Twelve volunteer trauma teams performed in four simulation scenarios in a paediatric hospital. The scenarios were video recorded, transcribed and analysed in 10-second intervals. Variation in the amount of utterances per team member in the prearrival period was compared with team performance and implicit coordination during the resuscitation.

Coders analysed 18 962 s of video. They coded 5204 team member utterances into one of eight communication behaviour categories. Inter-rater reliability was excellent (an average of 83.1% across all four scenarios). The average number of communications occurring during the prearrival period was 18.84 utterances, with a range of 2-42 and a SD of 9.55. The average length of this period was almost 2 minutes (mean =117.30 s, SD=39.20). Lower variance in team member communication during the prearrival better was associated with better implicit coordination (p=0.011) but not team performance (p=0.054) during the resuscitation.

Patterns of communication in the prearrival trauma resuscitation period predicted implicit coordination and a trend towards significance for team performance which suggests further studies in such patterns are warranted.