Eileen B. Entin

Learning nursing procedures: the influence of simulator fidelity and student gender on teaching effectiveness.

Simulation technologies are gaining widespread acceptance across a variety of educational domains and applications. The current research examines whether basic nursing procedure training with high-fidelity versus low-fidelity mannequins results in differential skill acquisition and perceptions of simulator utility. Fifty-two first-year students were taught nasogastric tube and indwelling urinary catheter insertion in one of two ways. The first group learned nasogastric tube and urinary catheter insertion using high-fidelity and low-fidelity mannequins, respectively, and the second group learned nasogastric tube and urinary catheter insertion using low-fidelity and high-fidelity mannequins, respectively. The dependent measures included student performance on nasogastric tube and urinary catheter insertion testing, as measured by observer-based instruments, and self-report questionnaires probing student attitudes about the use of simulation in nursing education. Results demonstrated higher performance with high-fidelity than with low-fidelity mannequin training. In response to a self-report posttraining questionnaire, participants expressed a more positive attitude toward the high-fidelity mannequin, especially regarding its responsiveness and realism.

Questionnaires for Distributed Assessment of Team Mutual Awareness

Teams, by definition, perform interdependent tasks that require team members to coordinate their decisions and actions in order to achieve their shared goals (Orasanu and Salas, 1993). In order to successfully achieve the level of coordination that is required for successful interdependent performance, team members need a shared awareness of the situation, and of the roles, tasks, and actions of the other team members. The existence of this “shared mental model” among team members has been suggested as an explanatory mechanism for effective teams, and, as measured in various ways, has been shown to increase team performance (Cannon-Bowers, Salas, and Converse, 1993; Stout, CannonBowers, Salas, and Milanovich, 1999).

Using message framing to achieve long-term behavioral changes in persons with diabetes

This study examines how the framing of educational information affects changes in health-related knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Patients with diabetes viewed either a gain- or a loss-framed informational video about proper foot care and its importance for the prevention of health-threatening problems. The gain-framed messages sustained long-term positive behavioral change. Regression analyses showed that changes in attitudes were predicted by changes in knowledge and that both framing and attitudes were predictors of long-term behavior. This study is important for nurses and certified diabetes educators in that it demonstrates that gain-framed messages are effective in sustaining health-promoting behavior.

Development and Evaluation of an Information Management Training Program

Effective information management skills are critical as we become more and more inundated with huge amounts of information. Drawing on applied research on information processing and situation assessment, we designed an information management training program based on the premises that 1) training in the identification of ones own information requirements will help decision makers recognize their critical information needs and focus on needed rather than surplus information, and 2) enhancement of organizational knowledge will provide decision makers with a clearer understanding of the needs and capabilities of other nodes in the organization. We developed an information management training program comprised of written and demonstration materials based on the mnemonic MISSION that was designed to help individuals identify and focus on the information needs for their mission and tasks. We conducted an evaluation of the training program and concluded that we needed to focus more strongly on behavioral rather than conceptual components of information processing. We also concluded that, to be useful, organizational knowledge needs to be integrated with the information management training.

The Effect of Time Pressure on Visual Information Utilization in Machine-Aided Target Recognition

In machine-aided target detection, human operators work with an aided target recognition (ATR) system to locate targets in cluttered and degraded imagery. A tradeoff exists when time is short between the use of fine-grained information that may offer more information to a human decision maker but may require more processing time, and the use of coarser-grained information that offers less information but may be processed more quickly. We investigated operators’ preferences and the sensitivity of their performance to time pressure under varying levels of information granularity. Three levels of granularity of ATR information were presented: binary (coarse granularity), discrete (moderate granularity), and continuous (fine granularity). The display methods for the ATR’s judgments were selected to be most appropriate and natural for each level of granularity. The binary and discrete levels were presented graphically while the continuous information was presented numerically. Subjects’ performance (measured as missed-detection and false-alarm rates) and their preferences were analyzed. The results showed that coarse and moderate levels of granularity for presentation of ATR information are robust to varying degrees of time pressure. The presentation of fine-grained ATR information, while slightly improving performance when a comfortable amount of time was available, decremented performance in the high time-pressure situation. The discrete level of information, which was presented in this study in a color-coded display format, was preferred by subjects over the binary and continuous levels. Subsequent studies will investigate different modes of presentation of discrete information to assist operators in their detection task, especially under high time-pressure conditions. The results of this work will be used in designing human-machine interfaces for ATR systems.

Training Information Management

A behaviorally-oriented information management training program was designed to help information managers cope effectively and efficiently with large volumes of incoming information. The information management program was evaluated with a posttest-only control group design. Participants performed a situation assessment task by monitoring email traffic to assess an evolving situation and make reports to a commanding officer. As hypothesized participants receiving training were better able than controls to integrate the critical information in the messages and this was reflected in the quality of their situation assessments, which were superior to those of controls. Moreover, trained participants opened significantly higher percentage of critical and relevant messages and a smaller percentage of noncritical messages than controls. The information management training program was deemed a success.