Effective Strategies for Teaching Teamwork

Teamwork is essential for health care providers, who must work together to ensure safe and effective patient care. The ability to function effectively as a team is especially important in critical care, where ad hoc teams are brought together for short-term management of crisis situations. Teamwork training has been widely implemented, but ongoing education and practice are needed to maintain and improve competency. This article reviews some of the literature on team science and provides recommendations for enhancing training to promote development of a shared mental model. Strategies such as ensuring multidisciplinary participation, clarifying team resources and goals, and creating practice scenarios can increase the effectiveness of training for critical care teams. Evaluation can provide immediate feedback on learning outcomes and may facilitate subsequent transfer of learning to the clinical setting. Interventions that improve a team's ability to work toward a common goal can improve outcomes for critically ill patients.