Using Mixed Reality Humans to Improve Communication Skills
Andrew S. Cordar (Author)
In healthcare, medical team training is an important component of ongoing communication skills training for healthcare providers. Medical team training involves scheduling multiple interdisciplinary health care providers to go through an exercise. Unfortunately, this is a logistically difficult process because health care providers are very busy. As a result, training may not even take place despite the importance of team training exercises. Mixed Reality Humans (MRHs) have shown to be useful replacements for missing teammates as a way to facilitate training. My dissertation work investigates how these MRHs can be most effectively used to improve healthcare providers' communication skills. Specifically, I investigated how MRHs can leverage the social learning theory to influence conflict resolution skills and closed loop communication skills. Additionally, I investigated how MRHs can adapt to the user to effectively influence closed loop communication skills. To investigate these questions, I designed, developed, and studied three mixed reality medical team training scenarios. These team training scenarios were tested on real healthcare providers at the UF Health hospital system. In total, 100 healthcare providers were recruited to go through these scenarios. The result of my work suggests that MRHs are an effective way to influence communication skills. Additionally, my work suggests that leveraging psychology theories or adapting to the skills of the providers are both
Thesis, Dissertation, English, 2017
University of Florida, [Gainesville, Fla.], 2017