Teamwork in Pediatric Resuscitation: Training Medical Students on High-Fidelity Simulation

Simulation training and teamwork for medical students are essential to improve performance in pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

To evaluate if a specific approach to teamwork improves technical and nontechnical performance.

We performed quasiexperimental, prospective, pre- and postinterventional, and nonrandomized research with 65 students in the fourth year of their medicine course. This was a case-control study in which teams used a customized TeamSTEPPS protocol (n=34) or not (n=31) for cardiopulmonary arrest training in children using high-fidelity simulation. All participants answered a sociodemographic and satisfaction questionnaire and underwent theory and practice pre- and posttesting. The survey data were collected in 2019 and analyzed using χ², Mann-Whitney, κ, and Wilcoxon tests. p<0.05 was considered significant.

Intervention and control groups achieved better scores in theory posttesting (p<0.001 and p=0.049), but there was no difference between them in pre- (p=0.291) and posttesting (p=0.397). In the checklist of the practice test, all groups obtained their best outcomes in posttesting and the intervention group achieved higher scores (p<0.001). All groups increased the number of teamwork events and reduced the time span to perform resuscitation first steps (p<0.001) in posttesting.

The use of teamwork training based on a customized TeamSTEPPS protocol improved performance in team behavior and group technical achievement. The evaluation of the students about the training was positive.