A Mixed Methods Approach to Define Tactile Requirements for a Part-Task Trainer

Abstract

In response to the incidence of oculofacial traumas that were observed during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, military medical care provider training programs have placed an increased focus on the treatment of ocular traumas. As such, the Lateral Canthotomy and Cantholysis (LCC) Training System was developed to simulate the anatomy of the human eye and to mimic the symptoms of an eye that is afflicted with a retrobulbar hemorrhage. We report a mixed-methods psychophysics study that was conducted during the development of the LCC Training System to determine the appropriate retrobulbar pressure to be simulated by the trainer to provide anatomically accurate sensations of pressure. More than 200 eye inserts with either pre-or post-LCC pressures were evaluated by oculofacial trauma subject matter experts. The captured evaluations enabled the research team to identify and specify the pressure requirements that would be used by manufacturers to produce an anatomically and tactically-accurate trainer.