Rating medical emergency teamwork performance: development of the Team Emergency Assessment Measure (TEAM).
OBJECTIVE
To develop a valid, reliable and feasible teamwork assessment measure for emergency resuscitation team performance.


BACKGROUND
Generic and profession specific team performance assessment measures are available (e.g. anaesthetics) but there are no specific measures for the assessment of emergency resuscitation team performance.


METHODS
(1) An extensive review of the literature for teamwork instruments, and (2) development of a draft instrument with an expert clinical team. (3) Review by an international team of seven independent experts for face and content validity. (4) Instrument testing on 56 video-recorded hospital and simulated resuscitation events for construct, consistency, concurrent validity and reliability and (5) a final set of ratings for feasibility on fifteen simulated 'real time' events.


RESULTS
Following expert review, selected items were found to have a high total content validity index of 0.96. A single 'teamwork' construct was identified with an internal consistency of 0.89. Correlation between the total item score and global rating (rho 0.95; p<0.01) indicated concurrent validity. Inter-rater (k 0.55) and retest reliability (k 0.53) were 'fair', with positive feasibility ratings following 'real time' testing. The final 12 item (11 specific and 1 global rating) are rated using a five-point scale and cover three categories leadership, teamwork and task management.


CONCLUSIONS
In this primary study TEAM was found to be a valid and reliable instrument and should be a useful addition to clinicians' tool set for the measurement of teamwork during medical emergencies. Further evaluation of the instrument is warranted to fully determine its psychometric properties.
Cooper
Simon
S
School of Nursing and Midwifery, Monash University, Gippsland Campus, Churchill, Victoria 3842, Australia. Simon.Cooper@med.monash.edu.au
Cant
Robyn
R
Porter
Joanne
J
Sellick
Ken
K
Somers
George
G
Kinsman
Leigh
L
Nestel
Debra
D
D004632:Emergency Medical Services / Q000592:standards*; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D010348:Patient Care Team / Q000592:standards*