Measuring teamwork and patient safety attitudes of high-risk areas

Patient care leaders recognize that substantial reductions in health care errors will not come until more attention is given to human solutions, such as improving teamwork in health care teams. The authors introduce a short, valid, and reliable instrument to measure teamwork and patient safety attitudes in hospital high-risk areas, namely the emergency department, the operating room, and the intensive care unit. The instrument was tested among nurses in four hospitals and the results showed that the nurses favored the team approach, while recognizing that teamwork in their departments is not very advanced and that communication with some key team members is problematic. This situation seems ideal for the design of a team training intervention in these settings.