Assessing a team's problem solving ability: evaluation of the Team Problem Solving Assessment Tool (TPSAT)

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Management
• Organizational Psychology
• Team Dynamics

Background:

• Effective team problem solving is crucial in healthcare.
• Assessing team potential is often subjective and time-consuming.
• Existing methods lack quantitative measures for team problem solving ability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify critical variables influencing team problem solving ability.
• To develop a quantitative decision aid for assessing team effectiveness.
• To enable healthcare managers to predict group problem solving potential.

Main Methods:

• Group consensus development methods were used to identify key variables.
• Expert opinions were gathered on factors crucial for team problem solving.
• A quantitative decision aid was designed based on identified variables.

Main Results:

• Key variables contributing to team problem solving ability were identified.
• A decision aid tool was developed for estimating team effectiveness.
• Initial evaluations of the decision aid were conducted.

Conclusions:

• The developed decision aid provides a quantitative method to assess team problem solving potential.
• This tool can help optimize resource allocation by predicting team effectiveness.
• The decision aid facilitates proactive assessment of healthcare teams' problem solving capabilities.