Team performance in resuscitation teams: comparison and critique of two recently developed scoring tools.

Journal article

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Following high profile errors resulting in patient harm and attracting negative publicity, the healthcare sector has begun to focus on training non-technical teamworking skills as one way of reducing the rate of adverse events. Within the area of resuscitation, two tools have been developed recently aiming to assess these skills - TEAM and OSCAR. The aims of the study reported here were: METHODS: The study consisted of two phases - reliability assessment; and content comparison, and correlation. Assessments were made by two resuscitation experts, who watched 24 pre-recorded resuscitation simulations, and independently rated team behaviours using both tools. The tools were critically appraised, and correlation between overall score surrogates was assessed. RESULTS: Both OSCAR and TEAM achieved high levels of inter-rater reliability (in the form of adequate intra-class coefficients) and minor significant differences between Wilcoxon tests. Comparison of the scores from both tools demonstrated a high degree of correlation (and hence concurrent validity). Finally, critique of each tool highlighted differences in length and complexity. CONCLUSION: Both OSCAR and TEAM can be used to assess resuscitation teams in a simulated environment, with the tools correlating well with one another. We envisage a role for both tools - with TEAM giving a quick, global assessment of the team, but OSCAR enabling more detailed breakdown of the assessment, facilitating feedback, and identifying areas of weakness for future training.

Authors: McKay, A; Walker, S; Brett, S; Vincent, C; Sevdalis, N

• Journal: Resuscitation
• Volume: 83
• Issue: 12
• Pages: 1478-1483
• Publication date: 2012-12-01
• DOI: 10.1016/j.resuscitation.2012.04.015
• EISSN: 1873-1570
• ISSN: 0300-9572
• Language: English
• Keywords: Patient Care Team; Observer Variation; Resuscitation; Clinical Competence; Humans