Men and women serving in Tier One or Tier Two battlefield caregiver roles (i.e., buddy-aid, Combat Lifesaver) may be reluctant to perform certain procedures on a wounded female. Anecdotal observations (Mazzeo et al., 2018) support this claim. A more rigorous, quantitative analysis is being conducted at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Participants will be measured on reaction time, time on task, and accuracy (collectively representing overall performance) while treating both male and female patient simulators for two gunshot entry wounds in the upper torso (within-subjects design). Treatment will require participants to expose the injury sites; for the female simulator this will require participants to remove a sports bra. Analysis will focus on whether reaction time, time on task, or accuracy increases or decreases significantly moving from a male to a female patient simulator. Two families of hypotheses will be explored: overall performance, and participant gender-specific performance (i.e., male participant treating male patient, female participant treating male patient, male participant treating female patient, and female participant treating female patient). This study serves an important step in determining whether the original anecdotal observations can be verified quantitatively, and whether differences in performance when rendering trauma care is significant across genders. This paper will also discuss a model for Cadet-led experiments with mentoring from senior research and development professionals.

References:

Mazzeo, M., et al. (2018). Development and assessment of a human patient simulator gender retrofit kit. Proceedings of the 2018 Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC), Orlando, FL.