Mindfulness and Executive Functions for Prediction of Non-technical Skills of Students in Pediatric Medical Simulations

Medical simulation is a technique that creates a situation or environment to allow persons to experience a representation of a real event for the purpose of practice, learning, evaluation, testing or to gain understanding of systems or human actions Non-technical skills in pediatric simulation are the skills of communication, leadership, teamwork, situational awareness, decision-making, resource management, safe practice, adverse event minimization, and professionalism, also known as teamwork skills. Mindfulness is the self-regulation of attention with an attitude of curiosity, openness and acceptance. Executive functions include a collection of interrelated functions that are responsible for purposeful, goal-directed, problem-solving behavior. In this project, the investigators aim to check whether features of mindfulness and executive functions can be used to predict teamwork skills of medical students during repeated high-fidelity simulations in emergency pediatric care. The project will include simulation center in Bialystok, Poland. The investigators will conduct this project over a time of 2 years. Team project is made up of 5 persons, including psychologist, simulation instructors and pediatricians. Participants will be students of medical faculty in medical university. The investigators expect to include at least 340 students in the study which will result in 180 assessed as main or second leaders in repeated simulations. Team project will assess the students during high-fidelity pediatric emergency simulations. Methods of assessment of medical students during pediatric emergency simulations: features of mindfulness (Mindful Attention Awareness Scale), assessment of executive functions (The Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functions - Adult), non-technical skills (Ottawa Crisis Resource Management scale \& checklist), technical skills (checklists) and stress. The researchers first will examine association between mindfulness or executive functions and demographic variables. And finally team project will assess the possibility of prediction of non-technical performance level during medical simulations with the use of mindfulness and executive functions assessment. In general the investigators anticipate that the results of the study will lead to the better understanding of mechanisms that influence non-technical skills in medical students during pediatric emergency cases.