Teaching Teamwork in Medical Education

Teamwork has become a major focus in healthcare. In part, this is the result Of the Institute of Medicine report entitled To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health system, which details the high rate of preventable medical errors, Man., of which are the result of dysfunctional or nonexistent teamwork. It has been proposed that a healthcare system that supports effective teamwork can improve the quality of patient care and reduce workload issues that cause burnout among healthcare professionals. Few clear guidelines exist to help guide the implementation of all these recommendations in healthcare settings. In general, training programs designed to improve team skills are the new concept for medicine, particularly for physicians who are trained largely to be self-sufficient and individually responsible for their actions. Outside of healthcare, research has shown that teams working together in high-risk and high-intensity work environments make fewer mistakes than individuals. This evidence originates from commercial aviation, the military, firefighting, and rapid-response police,activities. Commercial aviation, an industry ill which mistakes call result ill unacceptable loss, has been Lit the forefront of risk reduction through teamwork training, The importance of teamwork has been recognized by some in the healthcare industry, who have begun to develop their own speciality driven programs. The purpose Of this review is to discuss the current literature on teaching about teamwork in Undergraduate medical education. We describe the science of teams, analyze the work in team training that has been clone in Other field's, and assess what work has, been clone in other fields about the importance of team training (ie, aviation, nonmedical education, and business). Additionally, it is vital to assess what work has already been clone in medicine to advance the skills required for effective teamwork. Much of this work has been clone in fields in which medical professionals deal With Crisis Situations (ie, anesthesia, trauma, and labor and delivery). We describe the Current programs for to aching medical students these essential skills and what recommendations have been made about the best ways to introduce Curriculum. Finally, teaching this skill set into the we include a review oil assessing teamwork because one cannot teach team training Without implementing an assessment to ensure that the skills are being lea riled. Mt Sinai J Med 76.318-329, 2009. (C) 2009 Mount Sinai School of Medicine