Team Coordination and Disconnects During Simulation-Based Medical Team Training

Medical teams operating under stressful conditions are prone to experiencing disconnects, which are instances of task-specific incompatibility (i.e., ineffective coordination) between team members. In simulation-based medical team training, we examined (1) whether we can identify disconnects, by locating transitions in low-level team coordination based on data collected with wearable devices, and (2) how medical teams address disconnects based on video-based annotations of different types of high-level team coordination behavior. We find that with our exploratory approach we can identify disconnects with low-level transitions. Moreover, teams resolve disconnects with explicit action and information coordination, but lose valuable time in doing so.