title: Measuring teamwork and conflict among emergency medical technician personnel.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  We sought to develop a reliable and valid tool for measuring teamwork among emergency medical technician (EMT) partnerships.
  
  
  METHODS
  We adapted existing scales and developed new items to measure components of teamwork. After recruiting a convenience sample of 39 agencies, we tested a 122-item draft survey tool (EMT-TEAMWORK). We performed a series of exploratory factor analyses (EFAs) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test reliability and construct validity, describing variation in domain and global scores using descriptive statistics.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We received 687 completed surveys. The EFAs identified a nine-factor solution. We labeled these factors 1) Team Orientation, 2) Team Structure & Leadership, 3) Partner Communication, Team Support, & Monitoring, 4) Partner Trust and Shared Mental Models, 5) Partner Adaptability & Back-Up Behavior, 6) Process Conflict, 7) Strong Task Conflict, 8) Mild Task Conflict, and 9) Interpersonal Conflict. We tested a short-form (30-item SF) and long-form (45-item LF) version. The CFAs determined that both the SF and the LF possess positive psychometric properties of reliability and construct validity. The EMT-TEAMWORK-SF has positive internal consistency properties, with a mean Cronbach's alpha coefficient ≥0.70 across all nine factors (mean = 0.84; minimum = 0.78, maximum = 0.94). The mean Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the EMT-TEAMWORK-LF was 0.87 (minimum = 0.79, maximum = 0.94). There was wide variation in weighted scores across all nine factors and the global score for the SF and LF. Mean scores were lowest for the Team Orientation factor (48.1, standard deviation [SD] 21.5, SF; 49.3, SD 19.8, LF) and highest (more positive) for the Interpersonal Conflict factor (87.7, SD 18.1, for both SF and LF).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We developed a reliable and valid survey to evaluate teamwork between EMT partners.
authors: Department of Emergency Medicine and Center for Emergency Medicine of Western Pennsylvania, Inc., Pennsylvania, USA. pattersond@upmc.edu
authors: P Daniel
authors: PD
authors: Patterson
authors: Matthew D
authors: MD
authors: Weaver
authors: Sallie J
authors: SJ
authors: Weaver
authors: Michael A
authors: MA
authors: Rosen
authors: Gergana
authors: G
authors: Todorova
authors: Laurie R
authors: LR
authors: Weingart
authors: David
authors: D
authors: Krackhardt
authors: Judith R
authors: JR
authors: Lave
authors: Robert M
authors: RM
authors: Arnold
authors: Donald M
authors: DM
authors: Yealy
authors: Eduardo
authors: E
authors: Salas
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004634:Emergency Medical Technicians / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010348:Patient Care Team / Q000458:organization & administration*; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013223:Statistics as Topic