Using sensor technology to capture the structure and content of team interactions in medical emergency teams during stressful moments

Abstract

In healthcare, action teams are carrying out complex medical procedures in intense and unpredictable situations to save lives. Previous research has shown that efficient communication, high-quality coordination, and coping with stress are particularly essential for high performance. However, precisely and objectively capturing these team interactions during stressful moments remains a challenge. In this study, we used a multimodal design to capture the structure and content of team interactions of medical teams at moments of high arousal during a simulated crisis situation. Sociometric badges were used to measure the structure of team interactions, including speaking time, overlapping speech and conversational imbalance. Video coding was used to reveal the content of the team interactions. Furthermore, the Empatica E4 was used to unobtrusively measure the team leader's skin conductance to identify moments of high arousal. In total, 21 four-person teams of technical medicine students in the Netherlands were monitored in a simulation environment while they diagnosed and managed a patient with cardiac arrest. Outcomes of this exploratory study revealed that more effective teams showed greater conversational imbalance than less effective teams, but during moments of high arousal the opposite was found. Also, a number of differences were found for the content of team interaction. Combining sensor technology with traditional measures can enhance our understanding of the complex interaction processes underlying effective team performance, but technological advances together with more knowledge about the simultaneous application of these methods are needed to tap into the full potential of wearable sensor technology in team research.

Physiological arousal variability accompanying relations-oriented behaviors of effective leaders: Triangulating skin conductance, video-based behavior coding and perceived effectiveness

“…Our application of the variability thesis to leadership research illuminates the importance of this gripe (Navarro & Rueff-Lopes, 2015). By pairing a microbehavioral approach with measuring the continuous physiological data of leaders at the intra-individual level, we are able to answer an essential "when" type of question (see also Endedijk, Hoogeboom, Groenier, de Laat, & Van Sas, 2018). Highly effective leaders are especially likely to show variability in their physiological response "when" they display (both positive and negative) relations-oriented behaviors.…”

A Complex Adaptive Systems Approach to Real-Life Team Interaction Patterns, Task Context, Information Sharing, and Effectiveness

“…Teams may, indeed, tailor their interactions to the nature of the work at hand: Complex team tasks may require complex interactions among the team members. Thus, to explain why teams are effective, we must incorporate both the nonlinear nature of team interaction patterns and the contexts in which such patterns occur (Endedijk, Hoogeboom, Groenier, de Laat, & Van Sas, 2018; Kerr, 2017; Marks, Mathieu, & Zaccaro, 2001; Mathieu et al, 2019; Pentland, 1992; Ramos-Villagrasa, Marques-Quinteiro, Navarro, & Rico, 2018).…”

A Social Regulation Perspective on Team Reflexivity: The Development of an Analytical Framework

“…Previous research has shown effects of, for example, team familiarity on team communication and adaption to change, (Muskat et al, 2022), the desired balance between the size of a team and the information processing demands in relation to team learning behaviors (Staats et al, 2012;Wiese et al, 2022), and that teams with a formal leader show different (amounts of) team learning behaviors compared to leaderless teams such as the teams included in the current study (Wiese et al, 2022). Although the number of teams was limited, we know from research on different team processes that variation within teams is often larger than variation between teams (Endedijk et al, 2019). Therefore, observing complete lifespans of six different teams, covering a total of 100 meetings, has provided us with a very comprehensive set of data that allowed us to capture a great deal of variations in team reflexivity.…”