Abstract
Female soldiers are at greater risk of injury and have higher death rates compared to male soldiers. Female casualties are underrepresented in existing training materials for battlefield medics and the patient simulators are often masculine in appearance. The current study assesses the suitability of a female retrofit for male patient simulators and explores the existence of disparities in treatment between male and female patient simulators among combat medic trainees. Thirty-six participants undergoing training at a U.S. Army Medical Simulation Training Center performed a series of basic procedures on both a male patient simulator and a similar patient simulator with a female retrofit. The chest seal procedure was video-recorded and coded for errors committed by the trainees and analyzed to determine whether the apparent gender and order of the patient simulators affected error likelihood and rate. The results indicated that gender and order did not affect the likelihood of optimal performance, but if trainees treated the female retrofitted patient simulator first, they tended to commit more errors. Therefore, the use of a female retrofit may be useful for providing parity in training for gender; however, the issue of gender disparities remains a pressing issue for medical device design and research.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 2022 Design of Medical Devices Conference, DMD 2022 |
Publisher | American Society of Mechanical Engineers |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9780791885710 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2022 |
Event | 2022 Design of Medical Devices Conference, DMD 2022 - Minneapolis, Virtual, United States Duration: Apr 11 2022 → Apr 14 2022 |
Publication series
Name | Proceedings of the 2022 Design of Medical Devices Conference, DMD 2022 |
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Conference
Conference | 2022 Design of Medical Devices Conference, DMD 2022 |
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Country/Territory | United States |
City | Minneapolis, Virtual |
Period | 4/11/22 → 4/14/22 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors would like to thank the U.S. Army Futures command (Department of Defense) for sponsoring this research to analyze the effectiveness and need for female simulators in combat medic training. We would also like to thank Brian Van Voorst and other staff at Raytheon BBN Technologies for their collaboration and use of their CASTLE system for data collection. Additionally, we would like to thank SIMETRI Inc. and Aptima Inc. for their collaboration and use of their GRK making the female patient simulator possible. Finally, we would like to thank staff at Joint Base Lewis-McChord for their accommodation and participation in the study. Without the funding provided by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and collaboration between all parties this research would not have been possible to accomplish.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by ASME
Keywords
- Patient simulators
- combat medicine
- gender disparities
- medical training