Stress Coping Strategy on Perceived Stress Levels and Performance During a Simulated Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation

University Hospital Basel

Status: Completed

Conditions: Cardiopulmonary Resuscitations

Treatments: Behavioral: Stress coping

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01826318

SH_SIP_2007

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study assessed the impact of a task-focusing strategy on perceived stress levels and performance during a simulated CPR scenario.

Full description

Background: Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) causes significant stress, which may cause deficiencies in attention and increase distractibility. This may lead to misjudgements of priorities and delays in CPR performance, which may further increase mental stress (vicious cycle).

Aim: This study assessed the impact of a task-focusing strategy on perceived stress levels and performance during a simulated CPR scenario.

Methods: This is a prospective, randomized-controlled trial

Setting: Simulator-center of the University Hospital Basel, Switzerland.

Participants: A total of 124 volunteer medical students

Intervention: Randomization to receive a 10 minute instruction to cope with stress by loudly posing two task-focusing questions ("what is the patient's condition?", "what immediate action is needed?") when feeling overwhelmed by stress (intervention group) or a control group.

Outcome measures: The primary outcome is the perceived levels of stress and feeling overwhelmed (stress/overload); secondary outcomes were hands-on time, time to start CPR and number of leadership statements.

Enrollment: 124 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 20 to 80 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• 4th year medical students

Exclusion criteria

• none

Trial design

124 participants in 2 patient groups

intervention

Experimental group

Description:

Participants received a 10 minute instruction to cope with stress by loudly posing two task-focusing questions ("what is the patient's condition?", "what immediate action is needed?") when feeling overwhelmed by stress (intervention group)

Treatment:

Behavioral: Stress coping

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

Students in the control group did not receive any further instructions.