Background

Simulation has been identified as a means of assessing resident physicians' mastery of technical skills, but there is a lack of evidence for its utility in longitudinal assessments of residents' non-technical clinical abilities. We evaluated the growth of crisis resource management (CRM) skills in the simulation setting using a validated tool, the Ottawa Crisis Resource Management Global Rating Scale (Ottawa GRS). We hypothesized that the Ottawa GRS would reflect progressive growth of CRM ability throughout residency.

Methods

Forty-five emergency medicine residents were tracked with annual simulation assessments between 2006 and 2011. We used mixed-methods repeated-measures regression analyses to evaluate elements of the Ottawa GRS by level of training to predict performance growth throughout a 3-year residency.

Results

Ottawa GRS scores increased over time, and the domains of leadership, problem solving, and resource utilization, in particular, were predictive of overall performance. There was a significant gain in all Ottawa GRS components between postgraduate years 1 and 2, but no significant difference in GRS performance between years 2 and 3.

Conclusions

In summary, CRM skills are progressive abilities, and simulation is a useful modality for tracking their development. Modification of this tool may be needed to assess advanced learners' gains in performance.

Introduction

In hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) affects 200,000 adults in the United States each year, and resuscitative efforts are often suboptimal. The objective of this study was to determine whether a program of "mock codes" improves group-level performance of IHCA skills. Our primary outcome of interest was change in CPR fraction, and the secondary outcomes of interest were time to first dose of epinephrine and time to first defibrillation. We hypothesized that a sustained program of mock codes would translate to greater than 10% improvement in each of these core metrics over the first three years of the program.

Methods

We conducted mock codes in an urban teaching hospital between August, 2012 and October, 2015. Mock codes occurred on telemetry and medical/surgical units on day and night shifts. Codes were managed by unit staff and members of the hospital's "Code Blue" team, and data were recorded by trained observers. Data were summarized using descriptive statistics, and repeated measures outcomes were calculated using a mixed effects model.

Results

Fifty-seven mock codes were included in the analysis: 42 on Medical/Surgical units and 15 on Telemetry units. CPR fraction increased by 2.9% per six-month time interval on Telemetry units, and 1.3% per time interval on Medical/Surgical units. Neither time to first epinephrine dosing nor time to defibrillation changed significantly.

Conclusions

While we observed a significant improvement in CPR fraction over the course of this program of mock codes, similar improvements were not observed for other key measures of cardiac arrest performance.