Teamstepps Virtual Teams: Interactive Virtual Team Training And Practice For Health Professional Learners

Medical errors because of communication failure are common in health care settings. Teamwork training, such as Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS), improves team performance and patient outcomes. Academic institutions seek high-quality, low-cost curricula for interprofessional education (IPE) to prepare learners for clinical experiences before and after graduation; however, most IPE curricula involve lectures, simple tabletop exercises, and in-person simulations and are not readily accessible to geographically distributed and asynchronously engaged learners. To address this need, interprofessional faculty from multiple institutions and specialties created a series of eight screen-based interactive virtual simulation cases featuring typical clinical situations, with the goal of preparing learners to provide safe and effective care in clinical teams. Virtual simulations permit flexible, asynchronous learning on the learner\u27s schedule and allow educators an opportunity to identify gaps in knowledge and/or attitudes that can be addressed during class or forum discussions. In 2016, 1,128 unique users accessed the scenarios. As a result of such virtual activities, learner selection of the appropriate TeamSTEPPS tool increased with progression through the scenarios

A Comparison Of Teamwork Attitude Changes With Virtual Teamstepps\u3csup\u3e®\u3c/sup\u3e Simulations In Health Professional Students

Educators need accessible learner-centered tools to prepare health professional learners for safe interprofessional practice. TeamSTEPPS® is an evidence-based teamwork training program. Virtual TeamSTEPPS® scenarios were developed to overcome some of the barriers to interprofessional learning, including space and scheduling. However, teamwork attitudes may vary at baseline among health professional students and in response to virtual teamwork training. Three 5-min virtual TeamSTEPPS® scenarios were used by health professional students in the nursing, occupational therapy and physician assistant programs at two Midwestern universities. The scenarios required learners to use or identify teamwork strategies as part of an interprofessional team. The assessment and evaluation compared teamwork attitudes at baseline, and following use of teamwork training scenarios, using a validated tool, the TeamSTEPPS® Teamwork Attitudes Questionnaire. Of 319 learners with matched pre-post teamwork attitude scores, 57.4% were from the Nursing program, female (85.5%) and aged 18–24 years (78.1%). There were no differences in pre-intervention teamwork attitudes except Mutual Support (p \u3c 0.05). Post-intervention teamwork attitudes increased significantly (p \u3c 0.001), but varied by group in the domains of Leadership, Team Structure and Mutual Support (p \u3c 0.05). These findings may have implications for the development and evaluation of interprofessional curricula