Created 08/01/2017 at 2017:11AM

These past few weeks have been insanely hectic. The timing of the experiment is not optimal, so the very people we want to recruit as participants, are graduated from the program, or largely unavailable for other reasons. There was so much time pressure, in short bursts, only to end in not needing any of the time pressure, due to one or two participants missing.

The challenges of working with experiments which involve a pair of people, is primarily to get one’s schedule ahead of the other. It is much easier to give a yes or no answer, than to give abstract, large chunks of free time. Surgeons, and residents, also live on a different time schedule, with their work days starting at 6am or even earlier. Many of our participants have 16 hour shifts, and having even 30 minutes of their freetime for a voluntary study is quite a lot to ask. The first participant, came in at 9am, after working for 16 hours, and about to head home.

Somehow, we did manage to collect data on 5 total participant pairs though. So, not too bad, to have at least 5 data points to analyze later on. Perhaps, after continuing to recruit people, we will get a total of 7 or 8 data points by the end of summer, and then be able to have a conclusive study. Watching the trainer interact with the telestration system was quite interesting, and they never seemed to really put their arm down - potentially a cause of fatigue in future studies.

From preliminary observations, it appears that people have more difficulty than utility using the telestration trial, but I have not actually gone through the necessary statistical analysis to have any conclusions. It will be very interesting to understand how the extra technology usage makes people feel the need to continue communication, and how in future studies this telestration system could be pivoted into a useful tool for communication.