Lauren Kennedy-Metz, PhD
I am currently a postdoctoral research fellow affiliated with the Department of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, and working with Dr. Marco A. Zenati, Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery in the Division of Cardiac Surgery at the VA Boston Healthcare System in West Roxbury. My research is ultimately focused on enhancing patient safety by introducing and evaluating cognitive aids aimed at improving surgical teams’ cognitive and non-technical performance. My previous work as a doctoral student in the Department of Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health at Virginia Tech focused on physiological indicators of cognitive workload, and discerning the relationship between these indicators and 1) self-perceived levels of stress and cognitive workload and 2) task performance. I investigated the utility of using biofeedback and coping instructions as a cognitive aid for providers. The primary project in our multi-institutional research group at the VA focuses on an adaptive intra-operative procedural checklist designed to provide guidance to the cardiac surgery team during cardiac surgery operations including aortic valve replacement and coronary artery bypass graft surgery. We are interested in the team dynamics, including physiological measures of cognitive workload, communication patterns, situational awareness, and patient outcomes. Future work I’m interested in involves incorporating my multiple interests with an eye towards using physiological data alongside cognitive aid checklists to contribute to cardiac surgery team members’ awareness of and coping with workload changes.