CoMind Lab

Improving diagnoses by understanding the collaborative and cognitive processes of medical teams

The CoMind lab is part of the Diagnostic Quality Lab at the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) with a Starting Grant to Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Juliane Kämmer (project number TMSGI1_218047). Our research group seeks to provide a clearer understanding of how decision-making in medical diagnostics and other high-risk areas can be improved to help enhance diagnoses in the long term.

Incorrect medical diagnoses are unfortunately common and some of them can have serious consequences for patients. However, there is a limited understanding of the circumstances under which such errors occur and of how effective collaboration within the diagnostic team can help prevent them.

We are specifically interested in better understanding diagnosis as a team-based activity. For example, we investigate the interplay between cognitive and collaborative processes and how to best time team phases during the diagnostic process. For this, we engage in a continuous dialogue with practitioners to get input for our (basic) research and develop output (such as trainings) that is valuable for practice.

We rely on a wide array of methods, ranging from behavioral experiments, simulations, meta-analyses, and ethnography. We leverage theoretical approaches from a variety of disciplines and collaborate with an international interdisciplinary network.

 

Publications

5 key publications

Freytag, J., Stroben, F., Hautz, W. E., Schauber, S. K., & Kämmer, J. E. (2019). Rating the quality of teamwork—a comparison of novice and expert ratings using the Team Emergency Assessment Measure (TEAM) in simulated emergencies. Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine, 27, 12. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13049-019-0591-9

Hautz, W. E.*, Kämmer, J. E.*, Schauber, S. K., Spies, C. D., & Gaissmaier, W. (2015). Diagnostic performance by medical students working individually or in teams. JAMA, 313, 303–304. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2014.15770

Hautz, W. E., Kämmer, J. E., Hautz, S. C., Sauter, T. C., Zwaan, L., Exadaktylos, A. K., Birrenbach, T., Maier, V. Müller, M., & Schauber, S. (2019). Diagnostic error increases mortality and length of hospital stay in patients presenting through the emergency room. Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine, 27, 54. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13049-019-0629-z

Kämmer, J. E., Ernst, K., Grab, K., Schauber S. K., Hautz, S. C., Penders, D., & Hautz, W. E. (2024). Collaboration during the diagnostic decision making process: When does it help? Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 37, e2357. https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.2357

Seelandt, J. C., Boos, M., Kolbe, M., & Kämmer, J. E. (2023). How to enrich team research in healthcare by considering five theoretical perspectives. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1232331. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1232331

Team

Juliane Kämmer (Principal Investigator)

Juliane Kämmer is Assistant Professor at the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Bern funded by an SNSF Starting Grant. In her research on team decisions under uncertainty and diagnostic quality, she combines theories and methods from psychology, cognitive science and medical education research. Her research provides insights that aim to lead to better team decisions, such as in the form of better medical diagnoses.

Juliane is co-leader of the Diagnostic Quality Lab and a member of the Virtual Inselspital Simulation Lab at the University of Bern. In addition to the Starting Grant funding, Juliane has received a Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant from the European Union´s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme to study team decision making under uncertainty (No. 894536, “TeamUp”). She has also received funding as a co-applicant from the BeLEARN Association to develop an interprofessional team training in virtual reality.

She obtained her PhD in psychology from the Humboldt University in Berlin and the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Human Development in 2013. Trained as a psychologist, she has taught and mentored students of various disciplines including psychology, medicine, nursing education and economy at various German universities and the MPI for Human Development. From 2020 until 2022, she conducted research as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Bern. In 2023, she transitionally held the Chair of Social and Communication Psychology at the University of Göttingen.

Links: Google Scholar, X, Inselspital, LinkedIn

Download: Full CV, Publication list

Postdoc
Maike Isaac will join the CoMind lab as the Postdoctoral ethnographic researcher. She earned her PhD from the Department of Sociology at McGill University in Montréal, Canada, in 2024. Maike is a passionate ethnographer, focusing on gender, race, and migrant status and how these (ascribed) identity markers intersect and manifest in team dynamics in healthcare settings. For her PhD, she studied ethnographically how migrant men from West Asia and Africa are recruited and trained as elder care workers in Germany. She explored how their public image as supposedly hypermasculine and “dangerous” men affects their work experience, relationships with colleagues, and positions within their teams. During her doctoral studies, Maike was a fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, where she joined an international team of ethnographers studying care work, migration, and ageing. Her research has been supported by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec, the Jean Monnet Centre Montréal, and the Waterloo Centre for German Studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Prior to her PhD studies, Maike studied International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (LL.M.) at European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) and Ethnology (B.A.) at Leipzig University. From 2016 to 2018, she worked as the Education Specialist for Gender Equity and Sexual Violence Prevention at Harvard University. From 2021 to 2022, she supported the Equity Officer at the South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences.

PhD candidate
Lara Morscheck is a PhD candidate at the Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Bern, and member of the CoMind Lab. Her doctoral research focuses on deepening the understanding of how teamwork can both support and hinder medical diagnostic processes.

From the beginning of her bachelor’s degree in psychology at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Lara has actively engaged in diverse research environments, gaining extensive experience in the collaboration of various teams. Notably, she worked as a student assistant for renowned group researchers Prof. Margarete Boos and Prof. Stefan Schulz-Hardt, where she obtained valuable firsthand insights into group dynamics and decision-making processes (Frontiers in Psychology, 2023). Throughout her studies, Lara developed a strong specialization in group processes, with a particular interest in group decision-making under uncertainty—a topic that continues to shape her academic and professional pursuits.

Master student
Clemens Schöne is writing his Master thesis in Human Factors in the CoMind Lab. During his thesis, he will develop a pilot study that investigates how team communication might help counteract availability bias during medical diagnosis. Clemens has a background in Computer Science and Human Factors. As a Scrum Master with a solid foundation in (software-)team development, he has successfully guided four software teams through their formative stages (storming, norming, performing), leveraging both leadership and collaboration to optimize team performance. Building upon his practical skills, he expanded his knowledge by pursuing a Master’s degree in Human Factors at the Technical University Berlin, incorporating psychological theory into his work. As he is transiting into the healthcare IT sector, he aims to explore innovative ways to improve diagnostic processes in clinical settings for his Master’s thesis. Specifically, he intends to investigate how peer-challenging diagnostics—akin to the 'rubber duck debugging' method in software development—can enhance diagnostic accuracy and decision-making in medicine. 

Student Reserach assistant  in Psychology - we are hiring
German / English

Student Research assistant for Ethnographic Research - we are hiring
German / English

Collaborations

National collaborations
Prof. Dr. Wolf Hautz
Prof. Dr. Thomas Sauter
PD Dr. Tanja Birrenbach
Prof. Dr. Tanja Manser (FHNW)
PD Dr. Nadine Bienefeld-Seall (ETH Zürich)

International collaborations
Prof. Dr. Laura Zwaan (Erasmus MC, Rotterdam)
Prof. Dr. Silvia Mamede (Erasmus MC, Rotterdam)
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Gaissmaier (University of Konstanz)
Prof. Dr. Olga Kunina-Habenicht (TU Dortmund University)
Prof. Dr. Stefan Schauber (University of Oslo)
Dr. Stefan Herzog and Dr. Ralf Kurvers (Max Planck Institute for Human Development)
Prof. Dr. Markus Feufel (Technische Universität Berlin)

News

November 2024: Lara Morscheck starts her PhD at the CoMind Lab. The CoMind Lab participates at the 18th International Workshop on Behavioural Science Applied to Healthcare in Stavanger, Norway.

September 2024: The CoMind Lab participates in this year´s Awareness Week Patient Safety with a Webinar on “The importance of teamwork in the diagnostic process. What´s the evidence?”. https://patientensicherheit.ch/aktionswoche-patientensicherheit/

August 2024: Official kick-off of the CoMind lab

November 2023: The CoMind lab receives funding from the SNSF as a Starting Grant to Dr. Juliane Kämmer. https://data.snf.ch/grants/grant/218047