Mary McBride, MD, MEd
Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital
Background: Teamwork and communication are important aspects of patient care that are difficult to teach in traditional, didactic ways. Simulation provides a unique medium for this education.
Objective: A novel checklist assessment for teamwork is developed in this study to further advance this educational mission. A rigorous psychometric analysis is employed to determine reliability and validity of scores obtained from this checklist.
Methods: A novel checklist assessment for teamwork was developed and studied in a pediatric critical care setting. Two raters scored performances on this new checklist as well as the Mayo High Performance Teamwork Scale and a subjective global score. Descriptive statistics, G study, D study and correlation coefficients were calculated to analyze the data.
Results: Twenty-nine teams were assessed by two raters. Teams scored highly on most items. Items associated with closed-loop communication were scored most poorly. Neither tool demonstrated strong reliability with the coefficients of 0.42 and 0.08 for the novel tool and Mayo tool, respectively. Global scores correlated well with scores of both tools. Inter-rater reliability was strong.
Conclusion: The novel tool had low reliability but was more reliable than the standardly used Mayo Teamwork Tool. The novel tool could be used in formative assessments and clinical team discussion. Summative assessments likely need analysis by a more reliable and precise tool. Teamwork is a difficult construct for study. Its subjective nature and varying applications and settings add to that difficulty. Further work is needed in evaluating the assessment of these subjective items.
