Effects of Educational Intervention on Combat Trauma Care

Since the initiation of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, healthcare personnel have provided care to over 200,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. The casualties of war continue to stretch the capabilities of military medical personnel, equipment, and supplies. As predicted, the lethal battlefield of the future is the operational environment of today. With improvements in technology and doctrine, the combat casualty is becoming more and more salvageable. Initial and sustained survivability is dramatically increased if the team is equipped with nurses who are competent in caring for combat casualties in an operational environment. The specific aims of this study are as follows: 1) Identify essential content relative to care of combat casualties. 2) Develop valid and reliable instruments that measure cognition, critical thinking, and performance relative to care of combat casualties. 3) Estimate test-retest, interrater, and intrarater reliability of the above instruments. 4) Estimate content and construct validity of the above instruments. and 5) Determine which of two methods, (CD ROM, or Human Patient Simulator), is more effective in increasing cognition, critical thinking , and performance relative to care of combat casualties. There are no valid and reliable instruments to measure the outcomes or the effectiveness of teaching strategies. Instruments developed in the proposed study can also be used in future studies that address the efficacy of specific teaching strategies. If the study shows that one of the approaches is more effective in increasing cognitive knowledge and performance proficiency, educators can then capitalize on this finding and implement that strategy to optimize learning. If the findings show that there are no differences in the strategies, researchers and educators then need to develop and test other teaching methods. For example, if the control/no intervention group performs the same as the other groups, a clear message to educators is that they need to refine, develop and test other methods. In summary, this study is highly innovative and most timely in that it will provide for valid and reliable instruments for measuring the effectiveness of state-of-art strategies. Also, the study will determine which strategy is more effective in the acquisition of cognitive knowledge and performance proficiency. Such findings are of paramount importance in providing effective educational preparation of the military's healthcare providers who in turn will give essential care to individuals exposed to combat injuries.

Final report is available on NTRL: https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/PB2012107026.xhtml