Comparison of Gaze Patterns While Diagnosing Infant Epilepsies

To identify differentiator of infant epilepsies diagnosis skills, eye movement data were recorded from nineteen nurses and nine nursing school students during performing clinical reasoning processes for the diagnosis. Nineteen nurses includes one expert having rich experiences in caring for infants with severe physical and intellectual disabilities, nine specialists having relatively long experience as nurses in pediatrics/obstetrics as well as research/teaching experiences in pediatrics/obstetrics department in university, and nine intermediate nurses having relatively short experiences in pediatrics/obstetrics department in hospital. Nine nursing students are in 2nd/3rd-year at a nursing school. In the experiment, twenty video movies showing an infant were exposed. Each infant in the videos showed some epilepsies-like symptoms. Each participant was asked to make his/her diagnosis whether each of infants’ body motions may be serious or not. An expert and specialists showed different visual perception patterns compared with other participants. They paid more attention to a face of an infant, which is directly connected with a major root cause of the severe epilepsies (i.e., a malfunction of neurotransmitter function in brain), but less attention to physical symptoms such as unintentional motion in hands/foot. Based on the results, possible interpretations regarding characteristics of diagnosis strategies of expert, specialist, intermediate nurses and nursing school students are given.