The Effect of Large Versus Small Clog Size on Emergency Response Time

Clothing, Occupational Injuries

In many hospitals, clogs, usually white, are provided for healthcare workers. In our hospital, health care professionals from the department of intensive care medicine may be summoned to an emergency situation on a 24/7 basis. Clogs are thought to be of importance for running. Although clogs are available in several sizes, clog size is typically left to the discretion of the individual healthcare worker. Interestingly, The primary goal of this randomized controlled trial is to assess if wearing large size clogs as compared to small size clogs results in increased running speed. Participants will be randomized to small versus large clog size using a using randomly permuted blocks stratified by gender. Following randomization, participants will wear the clogs of allocated size and complete a standardized running course. The primary endpoint is the time taken to complete the course. The enrolment of 50 subjects would provide 80% power to show a 5-second difference in the response time at an average response time of 30 seconds with a 6 second standard deviation. The ethical committee judged the study protocol exempt from extensive review.

Netherlands