Virtual TeamSTEPPS(®) Simulations Produce Teamwork Attitude Changes Among Health Professions Students

The majority of the estimated 400,000 or more patient deaths per year in the United States are from preventable medical errors due to poor communication. Team training programs have been established to teach teamwork skills to health professions students. However, it is often challenging to provide this training at a physical site. A brief intervention using a virtual learning environment with TeamSTEPPS(®)-based scenarios is described.

Using a pretest-posttest design, the effects on teamwork attitudes in 109 health professional students from two institutions and multiple disciplines were measured using the TeamSTEPPS Teamwork Attitudes questionnaire.

Participants showed significant attitude changes in the categories of leadership, situation monitoring, mutual support, and communication (p ⩽ .05), with significance in four of the six indicator attitudes in the communication section at the p ⩽ .001 level.

These findings indicate the potential impact that virtual learning experiences may have on teamwork attitudes in learners across professions on multiple campuses.