Communication as a make or break factor in resuscitation

There is a great deal of current interest in the optimisation of teamwork during out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) resuscitation. The Resuscitation Council UK recognises that “Resuscitation requires a system to be in place to achieve the best possible chance of survival. The system requires technical and non-technical skills (teamwork, situational awareness, leadership, decision making)” in the 2015 resuscitation guidelines, and places emphasis on effective communication. This is worthy of note because essentially, all domains in existing non-technical skills measurement tools (e.g. ANTS, TEAM, OSCAR, CARDIOTEAM, etc.) contain communicative acts.

This work intends to assess the types of communication and communication strategies associated with high quality non-technical skills (NTS) in paramedic teams. This may point to novel opportunities to enhance team training. Helping team members to be more aware of effective language use may improve performance.

Ernisa is a postgraduate student at the University of Edinburgh and is supervised jointly by Prof Holly Branigan, Dr Hannah Rohde, Dr Chris Cummins from School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences. University of Edinburgh and Dr Gareth Clegg, Resuscitation Research Group, Edinburgh Medical School, University of Edinburgh.

You can get a flavour for Ernisa’s project below from her presentation at the  3 Minute Thesis heats at the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, 11th March 2016.