title: Debriefing medical teams: 12 evidence-based best practices and tips.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Medical teams are commonly called on to perform complex tasks, and when those tasks involve saving the lives of critically injured patients, it is imperative that teams perform optimally. Yet, medical care settings do not always lend themselves to efficient teamwork. The human factors and occupational sciences literatures concerning the optimization of team performance suggest the usefulness of a debriefing process--either for critical incidents or recurring events. Although the debrief meeting is often used in the context of training medical teams, it is also useful as a continuous learning tool throughout the life of the team. WHAT ARE GOOD DEBRIEFS?
  
  
  METHODS
  The debriefing process allows individuals to discuss individual and team-level performance, identify errors made, and develop a plan to improve their next performance.
  THE DEBRIEF PROCESS: The list of 12 best practices and tips--4 for hospital leaders and the remainder for debrief facilitators or team leaders--should be useful for teams performing in various high-risk areas, including operating rooms, intensive care units, and emergency departments. The best practices and tips should help teams to identify weak areas of teamwork and develop new strategies to improve teamwork competencies. Moreover, they include practices that support both regular, recurring debriefs and critical-incident debriefings. Team members should follow these main guidelines--also provided in checklist form--which include ensuring that the organization creates a supportive learning environment for debriefs (concentrating on a few critical performance issues), providing feedback to all team members, and recording conclusions made and goals set during the debrief to facilitate future feedback.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Central Florida, Orlando, USA. esalas@ist.ucf.edu
authors.forename: Eduardo
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Salas
authors.forename: Cameron
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Klein
authors.forename: Heidi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: King
authors.forename: Mary
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Salisbury
authors.forename: Jeffey S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Augenstein
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Birnbach
authors.forename: Donald W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Robinson
authors.forename: Christin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Upshaw
mesh_terms: D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D006126:Group Processes; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D019300:Medical Errors / Q000517:prevention & control; D010348:Patient Care Team / Q000592:standards*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014481:United States