Clinician performance during resuscitation: stress, decision-making and life-saving interventions

During resuscitation clinicians make decisions frequently, based on limited information, and in a potentially stressful environment. This thesis aimed to answer the question: can patient outcomes be optimised by focusing on factors that affect clinician performance during resuscitation, particularly related to decision-making and procedural performance. This thesis demonstrated that stress is commonly experienced by critical care clinicians during a resuscitation and identified key mitigators of stress that can help clinicians maintain their performance during these scenarios including: checklist utilisation, tailored education, decision-making heuristics, and procedure standardisation facilitating mental rehearsal.