Design and Development of an Objective Evaluation System for a Web-Based Simulator for Trauma Management

Abstract

Abstract Background Trauma injuries are one of the main leading causes of death in the world. Training with guidelines and protocols is adequate to provide a fast and efficient treatment to patients that suffer a trauma injury. Objectives This study aimed to evaluate deviations from a set protocol, a new set of metrics has been proposed and tested in a pilot study. Methods The participants were final-year students from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and first-year medical residents from the Hospital Universitario La Paz. They were asked to train four trauma scenarios with a web-based simulator for 2 weeks. A test was performed pre-training and another one post-training to evaluate the evolution of the treatment to those four trauma scenarios considering a predefined trauma protocol and based on the new set of metrics. The scenarios were pelvic and lower limb traumas in a hospital and in a prehospital setting, which allow them to learn and assess different trauma protocols. Results The results show that, in general, there is an improvement of the new metrics after training with the simulator. Conclusion These new metrics provide comprehensive information for both trainers and trainees. For trainers, the evaluation of the simulation is automated and contains all relevant information to assess the performance of the trainee. And for trainees, it provides valuable real-time information that could support the trauma management learning process.