Multi-level Team Coordination Dynamics during Simulation-Based Medical Team Training

Team coordination is essential for effective performance during critical, stressful events. To better understand processes and states involved at multiple levels of team coordination, we assessed the correspondence between low- and high-level coordination in teams participating in simulation-based medical team training. We computed a measure of low-level team coordination with Multidimensional Recurrence Quantification Analysis, applied to arm movement, heart rate, and skin conductance data. High-level team coordination was captured by annotating video recordings for explicit and implicit, information and action coordination. Three linear mixed-effects model were run, each predicting a type of low-level coordination, based on high-level coordination annotations, accounting for multiple observations per team. Our findings showed that, compared to periods without annotated coordination, explicit- and implicit- information coordination corresponded to significantly different low-level team coordination across each of the studied modalities. Further research is required to assess additional factors related to the temporal variability observed in low-level coordination.