Detecting Hesitation During Battlefield Wound Treatment on Female Soldiers

Trauma care training using a female gender retrofit kit (GRK) may provide for a more realistic environment to decrease any training gaps associated with providing trauma care to men and women. This paper builds upon pilot research [1] indicating participants hesitate when assessing a gunshot wound on a simulated female casualty compared to the same wound on a male casualty and make more errors in placing chest seals on female casualties. Using a 2 (gender of participant) × 2 (gender of the manikin) mixed design, participants must assess and treat two gunshot wounds on each manikin. The dependent measures include initial response time, exposure time, time on task, total task time, exposure success, and accuracy of the chest seals. This experiment identified that participants are more likely to miss gunshot wounds on the female casualty if covered by a bra, and struggle to apply the chest seals appropriately.