Project leader
        Project description

 

Karl Hampl, M.D.

The selection of anesthesia personnel traditonally relies on
information obtained from unstructered interviews or reviews of
personal files of the candidates. However, experience from other
professions in selecting personnel, i.e., cockpit personnel for
airlines, suggests that this approach may not be effective for
selecting high profile applicants for training positions in
anesthesia. More objective information such as data obtained from
test batteries assessing various characteristics of the applicants
(i.e., technical and interpersonal skills) may be useful for
selecting anesthesia personnel.
We therefore performed a job analysis in order to identify
psychological markers which appear to be of importance to
anesthestiologists. Based on the results of this analysis, a test
battery was created in collaboration with Vreni Wuethrich and Beat
Benninger (Assessment Center OTR, Swissair, Zurich). This test
battery consists of various paper and pencil tests and an interactive
simulation test which discriminates for the most important
psychological markers (i.e., stress tolerance, multitasking skills,
interpersonal skills etc. )
For validation purposes, 12 trainee anesthesiologists were subjected
to this test battery and the results were correlated to those of the
individual on-job performance data obtained from periodical
assessments by senior staffs. There was an extremely high correlation
of on-job performance data (for both technical and interpersonal
skills) with the results of most tests applied to the trainees.
We plan to further validate our test battery by subjecting candidates
for the anesthesia training program in our institution and to compare
the test results with long term on-job performance data.

16.07.99