Background: Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) causes significant stress, which may cause deficiencies in attention and increase distractibility. This may lead to misjudgements of priorities and delays in CPR performance, which may further increase mental stress (vicious cycle).~Aim: This study assessed the impact of a task-focusing strategy on perceived stress levels and performance during a simulated CPR scenario.~Methods: This is a prospective, randomized-controlled trial~Setting: Simulator-center of the University Hospital Basel, Switzerland.~Participants: A total of 124 volunteer medical students~Intervention: Randomization to receive a 10 minute instruction to cope with stress by loudly posing two task-focusing questions (what is the patient's condition?, what immediate action is needed?) when feeling overwhelmed by stress (intervention group) or a control group.~Outcome measures: The primary outcome is the perceived levels of stress and feeling overwhelmed (stress/overload); secondary outcomes were hands-on time, time to start CPR and number of leadership statements.
This study assessed the impact of a task-focusing strategy on perceived stress levels and performance during a simulated CPR scenario.