Applications of TeamSTEPPS to Interdisciplinary Health Professional Education

Various IOM reports highlight urgency for health professions education reform, most notably the increase of cross-disciplinary education. With an estimated 44,000-98,000 preventable annual deaths in the US due to medical errors; research indicates that two factors, teamwork and communication, contribute to 70% of such errors. AHRQ developed the TeamSTEPPS curriculum to improve patient safety by promoting improved communication and leadership among all members of a healthcare team. The TeamSTEPPS curriculum was tested in two successive years of medical-nursing student teamwork exercises. In Year 1, n =438 students participated in a one-day training, which included TeamSTEPPS training, four alternative educational interventions, and outcomes teamwork measures. In Year 2, n = 397 students participated in a similar training but with more intensified exercises. In both years, students were pre- and post-tested with knowledge and attitudes instruments. The pre- and posttest attitudes instrument had strong validity with internal consistencies of .824 and .859, respectively, and an eight factor with R2 = .545. In both years, experimental cohorts significantly improved on teamwork attitudes from pre-to-posttest (F = 48.7, p = .000). Likewise, teamwork knowledge significantly improved for all cohorts. In Year 2, students who received more intensified training significantly improved on both attitudes and knowledge compared to students who had not received such training. The teamwork training significantly improved student knowledge and attitudes on interdisciplinary teamwork for improving patient safety. We found that more intensified training was more effective in achieving student learning and communication skills than brief interventions involving different instructional modalities.