Improvement in student-led debriefing analysis after simulation-based team training using a revised teamwork assessment tool

Abstract

Background: Team debriefing is an important teamwork development intervention for improving team outputs in healthcare. Debriefing is a key component of experiential team training teamwork development interventions such as simulation-based training. Improving the quality of debriefing of healthcare teams, therefore, has multiple benefits. We investigated whether the quality of student-led debriefing improved using a shortened guide.

Methods: Senior medical students, nurse anesthesia students, and senior undergraduate nursing students participated in student operating room team training at a health sciences center in the southeastern United States. Student teams participated in a dual-scenario simulation-based training session with immediate after-action debriefings after each scenario. In 2018, student teams conducted the second debriefing using as a guide the teamwork assessment scale, an 11-item, 3-subscale, 6-point Likert-type instrument. In 2019, they used a shortened, revised, 5-item version of the teamwork assessment scale, the quick teamwork assessment scale. Trained observers rated the quality of the student-led debriefings using the Objective Structured Assessment of Debriefing, an 8-item, 5-point instrument. The Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test was used to compare the teamwork assessment scale-guided and the quick teamwork assessment scale-guided mean item debriefing scores.

Results: Two observers rated 3 student-led team debriefings using the teamwork assessment scales as a guide in 2018, and 6 such debriefings happened using the quick teamwork assessment scale as a guide in 2019. For each debriefing, observer scores were averaged for each Objective Structured Assessment of Debriefing item; these mean scores were then averaged with other mean scores for each year. The use of the quick teamwork assessment scale resulted in a statistically significant higher mean score for the Analysis Objective Structured Assessment of Debriefing item compared with the use of the teamwork assessment scale (4.92 [standard deviation 0.20] versus 3.83 [standard deviation 0.76], P = .023).

Conclusion: The use of a shortened teamwork assessment instrument as a debriefing guide for student teams in student operating room team training was more effective in analysis of actions than the original, longer tool. Next steps include determining the efficacy of the quick teamwork assessment scale in an actual clinical setting.