Creating a sustainable, interprofessional-team training program: initial results

The purpose of this program evaluation was to explore whether incorporating deliberate learning concepts, through the use of simulated patient scenarios to teach interprofessional collaboration skills to a healthcare team on one acute-care hospital unit, would improve the resuscitation response in the first 5 minutes on that unit.

This was a pilot program evaluation utilizing a unit-based, clinical nurse specialist in the deployment of an interprofessional educational program involving simulation on an acute medical floor in a large tertiary-care hospital.

Eighty-four staff members participated in 17 simulations. The sample included first-year internal-medicine residents, registered nurses, respiratory therapists, and patient care technicians.

This was a program evaluation that used the TeamSTEPPS Teamwork Perceptions Questionnaire (T-TPQ) (Classroom slides: TeamSTEPPS essentials; http://www.ahrq.gov/professionals/education/curriculum-tools/teamstepps/instructor/essentials/slessentials.html#s3) during the presimulation/postsimulation sessions to assess the participants' perceptions of teamwork. Expected intervention behaviors were collected through observations of participants in the simulations and compared with the American Heart Association guidelines (Circulation 2010;122:S685-S670, S235-S337). Common perceptions of participants regarding the experience were obtained through open-ended evaluation questions.

Fifty-three participants completed the pre- and post-T-TPQ. Mean scores in the leadership category of T-TPQ decreased significantly (P = .003) from the pretest (median, 2.167) to the T-TPQ posttest (median, 2.566). Only 35% of the groups administered a defibrillation during the ventricular fibrillation simulation scenario, and only 1 group delivered this shock within the American Heart Association's recommended time frame of 2 minutes (Circulation 2010;122:S235-S337).

A single resuscitation simulation was not enough interventional dosage for staff to improve the resuscitation process. A longitudinal study should be conducted to determine the effectiveness of the program after staff members have repeated the program multiple times.

A unit-based quality-improvement simulation training program could help improve the first-5-minute response and resuscitation skills of staff by increasing the frequency of unit-based training overseen by the unit's clinical nurse specialist.