Christina Tatalia

I am currently a 1 st year PhD student working with Professor Eamonn Ferguson & Dr Claire Lawrence at the School of Psychology, in collaboration with Dr Bryn Baxendale at the Trent Simulation & Clinical Skills Centre based at the QMC.

I obtained a BSc in Psychology at the University of Hull in 2006. As part of my undergraduate degree I studied Health Psychology, and I became particularly interested in Doctor-Patient communication. I have a background working in various medical and healthcare settings as an Auxiliary Nurse, including A&E, surgical wards, Psychiatric wards and Nursing Homes.

My research involves evaluating the emergency medical care simulation training for foundation level 1 and 2 Medical Doctors. Specifically I am looking for predictors in performance (e.g. mood, fear of failure). My initial aim is to develop a validated measure that can be used to give Doctors feedback on their performance. If we can identify good predictors of performance, we can manipulate the self-variables that influence the learning outcome in order to facilitate optimum learning and maximise individual performance. The main limitation of using simulators as a way of learning is the issue surrounding validity. Does participation in medical simulators help improve performance in real-life medical settings? To investigate this I aim to conduct a longitudinal study which will follow the Doctors back into their work setting and examine the extent of training transfer (i.e. the extent that non-technical skills, such as teamwork & communication, learnt in the simulator are transferred to real life medical settings).