Exploring teamwork, trust, and emergency response competence in emergent ad-hoc immediate responder groups: an experimental simulation study

People in the immediate vicinity of an accident sometimes provide first aid as immediate responders and may form spontaneous groups to provide aid together. Previous research has found conflicting results where first aid is sometimes improved and sometimes unaffected by the cooperation in these groups. This study investigated the effect of competence and the teamwork factors leadership, coordination and swift trust on first aid team performance in immediate responder groups. Ad-hoc groups of three participants with mixed or low emergency response competence acted in a simulated traffic accident. Swift trust and emergency response competence increased first aid performance while leadership and coordination did not. Low competence groups were also found to overestimate their team performance while mixed competence groups were found to underestimate their team performance. Further research should investigate how to support swift trust within these groups and explore potential education interventions for improving the effect of teamwork.