Attentional Capacity and Clinician Performance

Change in Sustained Attention Clinical Trial

— ACCP  

Official title:

Attentional Capacity and Clinician Performance: Eye-Tracking Participants When Using a High-Fidelity Surgical Simulator That Emulates Cardiology Procedures

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Recruiting

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT02928796
• Other study ID #: ACCP - 1
• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• First received: September 30, 2016
• Last updated: October 6, 2016
• Start date: September 2016

Study information

• Verified date: October 2016
• Source: University College Cork
• Contact: Jonathan Currie, BSc
• Phone: +447525778242
• Email: currie-j[@]email.ulster.ac.uk
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Health authority: United Kingdom: Ulster University, Research Ethics Filter CommitteeIreland: University College Cork, Clinical Research Ethics Committee
• Study type: Observational

Clinical Trial Summary

Uncovering the distinct measurements and features that potentially exist in different levels of expertise when performing cardiology-based procedures. There is a belief that tracking the visual attention and other psychophysiological measures during performance of these procedures may assist in uncovering the attentional capacity of participants and how it links with overall performance.

Description:

Attentional capacity is the number of items a person can hold in their temporal memory whilst undertaking a task (researchers equivocate this to Random Access Memory in computing hardware). Therefore, attentional capacity is thought to play a role in task performance and if a person's attentional capacity is measured 'in-vivo' then one can predict that person's ability and aptitude (classifying if they are an expert or novice since an expert will not require the full capacity of their temporal capacity, as many of the routine steps are stored in their permanent memory). The measurement of performance is of interest in medical training and competency testing research. Eye-tracking and other novel methods could offer new and effective components for measuring performance during complex procedures. These novel methods have increasingly been spotted in new healthcare research studies which aim to use them for a multitude of purposes, mostly to uncover valuable insights between different participant performance levels. One form of medical training is high-fidelity virtual reality simulators that can provide an almost life-like training environment for the trainee and one common use of these simulators is for surgical training . Some work with eye-tracking has already been done with surgical tasks that indicates visual attention does discriminate between novice and expert level performance. There is scope for using eye-tracking technology to capture visual attention during complex surgical procedures to uncover the discriminatory measurements between participants at different levels of expertise.

Aims The first aim of the study is to investigate the relationship between attentional capacity and performance during cardiology-based procedures. The hypothesise is that a significant relationship will be found and that attentional capacity will be a statistically significant predictor for discriminating between experts and novices.

The second aim of the study is to investigate the relationship between visual attention (recorded via eye tracking) and the precisely recorded actions taken by the participant during the procedure.

A third aim of the study is to investigate the relationship between physiological metrics (Heart rate, GSR recorded via E4 wristband) and the precisely recorded actions taken by the participant during the procedure.

This will be facilitated by the capture of the participant's visual attention, through worn eye-tracking glasses, level of arousal, through worn GSR/EDA wristband and their verbalisation (thinking-aloud during task performance), recorded through video/microphone, during two simulated cardiology-based procedures. The simulator will provide its own metrics (duration etc.) to represent the participants' performance during the procedure. The simulation will be provided by a state of the art of surgical simulator in the ASSERT Centre, University College Cork. An extra display monitor will also be included to provide the extra stimulus to assess attentional capacity. The monitor will display a specific playing card at certain times during the proceedings. The participant will have to acknowledge what the card was. This and the visual attention capture will provide insight to the participants' attentional capacity.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Recruiting
• Enrollment: 14
• Est. primary completion date: October 2017
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: Both
• Age group: N/A and older

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• They must be qualified medical doctor with specific interest in cardiology (e.g. consultant cardiologist). Consultant group must contain consultants only and registrar group must have enrolled registrars only.

Exclusion Criteria:

Study Design

Observational Model: Cohort, Time Perspective: Prospective

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Change in Sustained Attention

Intervention

Behavioral:
• Cognitive Stimulus
Participants to pay attention to a supplementary display monitor and respond to specified stimulus images, all while performing the simulated cardiology-based procedure.

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
Ireland	ASSERT Centre, University College Cork	Cork City	Cork

Sponsors (2)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
University College Cork	University of Ulster

Country where clinical trial is conducted

Ireland, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Mean attentional capacity	The hypothesis is that a significant statistical relationship will be found between measured attentional capacity (via a card reading task) and overall surgical task performance grading. Attentional capacity, we hypothesise, will be a statistically significant predictor for discriminating between performance level.	Up to 12 Months.	No
Primary	Visual attention characteristics for stimulus reading 'card' task	The hypothesis is that a significant statistical relationship will be found with characteristics of participant's visual attention (e.g. mean fixation duration, mean saccade latency, overall visual latency before card acknowledgement) and the measured attentional capacity.	Up to 12 months.	No