Development of a Novel Cardiac Arrest Ventilation Rate Metronome: A Human Factors and Implementation Science...

Excessive ventilation adversely affects cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) hemodynamics and outcomes. Pediatric providers rarely achieve guideline-recommended CPR ventilation rates. We aimed to use human factors engineering to design a metronome to improve compliance with recommended CPR ventilation rates. We hypothesized that in usability testing, our novel metronome would achieve: 1) a System Usability Scale (SUS) score greater than 68 and 2) greater than 70% of CPR epochs with ventilation rates within target range, which would be sufficient to support a pilot trial in our PICU.

Prospective single-center mixed-methods study.

Seventy-five-bed academic PICU.

Multidisciplinary clinicians.

None.

We elicited clinician feedback on the proposed ventilation rate metronome with a survey. Participatory design sessions determined optimal metronome components. During high-fidelity simulation usability testing, we collected qualitative and quantitative measures reflecting participant feedback and performance. Average ventilation rates were calculated during 30-second epochs of CPR, with average rates ± 2 breaths/min (bpm) from the target considered to be within goal range. Among 107 survey respondents, perceptions of appropriateness, acceptability, and feasibility of the ventilation rate metronome were favorable. The final prototype used a bell sound for high saliency in noisy environments and a scrolling timed vertical bar, with pre-set options for three guideline-recommended CPR ventilation rates (infants: 30 bpm, children 1-17 yr old: 20 bpm, adults: 10 bpm). In usability testing (three groups, 34 clinicians), median SUS was 92.5 of 100 (interquartile range, 89.4-93.1), with 0 attributable errors. Overall, 34 of 36 (94% [95% CI, 81-99%]) epochs of simulated CPR with metronome use had ventilation rates ± 2 bpm from the target rate.

Utilizing human factors engineering and implementation science, we successfully designed a novel ventilation rate metronome. When deployed during high-fidelity cardiac arrest simulations, metronome use had high usability scores and resulted in excellent compliance with recommended ventilation rates.