Using Simulation to Evaluate and Improve Team Cognition in Handoffs

Handoffs, e.g., between hospital units, are important to patient safety, providing opportunities to detect and correct errors but also risking information loss, patient harm and decreased quality of care. We will record simulated handoffs of a pediatric patient with a penetrating chest trauma from OR to PICU at Jump Simulation, and collect survey and focus group data after each simulation. We will use the recordings to develop a measure of team cognition in handoffs using three strategies: adapting measures from military research, innovating automated team-level measures and examining gaze coordination. Based on the survey and the focus groups, we will identify sociotechnical system barriers, facilitators and solutions to inform the development of an improvement intervention.

Funding: Jump ARCHES endowment through the Health Care Engineering Systems Center

Research Tools:

Care Transition Participatory Simulation Protocol

Care Transition Participatory Simulation OR team written information

Care Transition Participatory Simulation PICU team written information – Based on Catchpole et al (2007)

Care Transitions Post-Simulation Survey