Previous research has demonstrated that mental stress impairs performance of rescuers in emergency situations [14], which was also validated within this analysis. This may be due to several causal pathways. First, mental stress has been shown to impair the attentional resources because the cognitive system is in danger of becoming overloaded. During stressful situations, participants may selectively focus their attention to selected tasks only, thereby neglecting other potentially relevant information. As stress increases, the ability to filter

Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical out irrelevant information may decrease, leading to increased distractibility [23-25]. Second, studies found that stress impairs retrieval from memory; for example stress due to public Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical speaking has been associated with impairments on tasks that required remembering previously learned information [40]; in our case, retrieval of existing knowledge about the treatment algorithm may have been impaired. Third, stress has also been shown to impair rational decision-making [10,25]. Finally, stress has also been implicated in loss of team perspective Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical and decreased team performance [31,41]. Importantly, decreased performance due to stress may in

turn further increase mental stress of rescuers leading to a vicious cycle. Only few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of interventions to reduce chronic stress in medical practice. Effects of such interventions have included

a reduction in perceived stress-levels for treatment Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical groups [42,43], increased assertiveness scores [44,45], and increases in job satisfaction [46]. One study of behavioral training in general practitioners demonstrated Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical a benefit in developing skills at coping with stress [30]. This training improved the general practitioner’s quality of work life and reduced their work-related psychological distress; yet, these were chronic stress situations and CPR related stress is an acute stress reaction. Similar stress coping strategies for acute emergency situations, all such as CPR, are largely lacking. A recent German study investigated the effects of crew resource management (CRM) training including psychological teaching on the performance of intensive care selleck products professionals in a randomized-controlled trial [11]. The training did reduce stress, but no significant difference in the stress response or medical performance was noted in comparison to a group receiving traditional training; note that the CRM training was not specifically focusing on stress. Our intervention aimed at bringing the attention of rescuers to the important elements of the task and to task priorities by posing two task-focusing questions in case they felt overwhelmed by stress in a CPR situation.