Assessing the real-time cognitive capabilities of first responders using emerging technologies in manikin simulators

Abstract

Medical triage can be a highly stressful situation in which decisions and task performance may have life or death consequences. Individual responses in stressful situations may affect task performance. Increased injury or casualties may occur without proper training and competency of the firstresponder. The emerging technologies of advanced manikin simulators have afforded anatomic, physiological, and pharmacologic realism, which can be dynamically programmed in real-time. This has increased the capabilities and realism of manikin simulations, thus allowing advanced learning techniques that were not previously possible. By employing physiological measures of the learner to determine areas of overwhelming task complexity, which may degrade performance, a method such that the training can be adjusted to the real-time cognitive needs/load of the learner (adaptive scaffolding) can be applied. This has the potential to enhance learning and human data processing in medical triage training. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.