Simulation Training in Emergency Department Imaging 2 (STEDI)

Research summary

Background: Computerised Tomography (CT) imaging is frequently used in Emergency Departments to assess patients. This often requires patients to wait of up to several hours for a scan due to service pressures, with a further wait of up to several hours for a radiologist to look at the images and interpret the findings. This can lead to patients waiting a long time in the Emergency Department to be discharged home or have their problems diagnosed. We recently undertook a small pilot study which looked to see whether 30 Emergency Department clinicians could be trained to interpret CT head scans, and whether this could reduced the length of time patients spent in the Emergency Department. ED clinicians reported 88 scans encountered on clinical shifts with 97% accuracy, with a mean reduction in reporting time of 51 minutes. We now seek to expand this study to see if we can replicate these findings at scale Aim: 1) To determine the improvement in CT head interpretation accuracy of the trial participants after undergoing simulation training 2) To measure the potential impact of ED clinician interpretation on time to diagnostic report 3) To measure the real-world accuracy of ED clinicians in interpreting CT head images encountered in routine clinical practice Method: Participating clinicians will undertake an online training module to aid their interpretation of CT scans. They will then try to interpret CT head scans seen in clinical practice over a three month period, compared with the findings of the radiologist, and have their performance measured by online assessment before and after training and after 3 and 6 months post training. Participants: 180 Emergency Department Clinicians Sites: 6 Emergency Departments which form part of the Thames Valley Emergency Medicine Research Network (www.TaVERNresearch.org)

Principal Investigator

Mr Alex Novak

Contact us

Email: sally.beer@ouh.nhs.uk

IRAS number

310995