Immersive simulations with extreme teams

Abstract

Extreme teams (ETs) work in challenging, high pressured contexts, where poor performance can have severe consequences. These teams must coordinate their skill sets, align their goals, and develop shared awareness, all under stressful conditions. How best to research these teams poses unique challenges as researchers seek to provide applied recommendations while conducting rigorous research to test how teamwork models work in practice. In this article, we identify immersive simulations as one solution to this, outlining their advantages over existing methodologies and suggesting how researchers can best make use of recent advances in technology and analytical techniques when designing simulation studies. We conclude that immersive simulations are key to ensuring ecological validity and empirically reliable research with ETs.

Communication and coordination across event phases: A multi‐team system emergency response

“…Data were collected from an immersive table‐top simulation of the strategic multi‐agency ( n = 11 agencies) response to a terrorist incident. Immersive simulations differ from laboratory studies by focusing on data collection with expert practitioners, in an environment that adequately represents the complexities of the organizational context (Brown, Power, & Conchie, 2020). As such, immersive simulated environments are expected to elicit similar behavioural patterns and cognitive processes as would be found in situ (Manser et al., 2007).…”

“…As such, immersive simulated environments are expected to elicit similar behavioural patterns and cognitive processes as would be found in situ (Manser et al., 2007). For MTSs operating in extreme environments, immersive simulations provide a realistic level of stress and uncertainty, while offering a safe and ethically appropriate context in which to conduct research (Alison et al., 2013; Brown et al., 2020; Power & Alison, 2017a). Prior research has evidenced the use of single and repeated simulations in studies of major incident response ( see Alison, Power, van den Heuvel, Humann, et al., 2015; Wilkinson et al., 2019).…”

Insights on Public Health Professionals Non-technical Skills in an Emergency Response (Multi-Team System) Environment

“…To support this kind of research, researchers will need to think creatively about how to develop after action review methods and immersive simulation scenarios that will elicit the professional non-technical skill requirements identified here ( see Brown et al, 2020 ).…”

Identifying Challenges to Critical Incident Decision-Making through a Macro-, Meso-, Micro- Lens: A Systematic Synthesis and Holistic Narrative Analysis

“…3.2.6. Six: Future Research-Focused Horizon Scanning Experimentally examining all the factors, at a holistic level (e.g., Macro-, Meso, and Micro-level), is crucial to advancing decision-making (Brown et al, 2020). Yet, research remains in its infancy, as decision-making challenges have not yet been captured through empirical formats (Brown et 2020), whilst supportive of innovation and technology, suggests that high-delity simulation research lacks context validity, limiting the translation of theory to practice.…”

“…For example, there has been a steady increase in mass causality events (e.g., terror related incidents; Craigie et al, 2020) that require a rapid and actionable response from individual agencies (e.g., Police; Fire and Rescue; Critical Care operators). Further, these emergency response agencies are often required to operate within the boundaries of a multi-agency system (Brown, 2020).…”