Enhancing team development in an internal medicine resident continuity clinic.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Healthcare Management
• Patient Safety

Background:

• Interprofessional teamwork is crucial for safe, high-value patient care, as recognized by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).
• Assessing the impact of targeted teamwork training on resident teams is essential for improving healthcare delivery.
• Continuity clinics are vital settings for developing and evaluating interprofessional collaboration skills.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effect of an interprofessional teamwork curriculum on team development and patient safety perceptions.
• To determine the feasibility of implementing a TeamSTEPPS-based curriculum in an Internal Medicine (IM) resident continuity clinic.
• To compare outcomes between an intervention group receiving teamwork training and a control group receiving standard education.

Main Methods:

• A quasi-experimental design was used in an IM resident continuity clinic with residents, faculty, and interprofessional team members.
• The intervention group received strategically timed TeamSTEPPS training, while the control group received usual clinic education.
• Team development and safety climate were measured using the Team Development Measure (TDM) and Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) pre- and post-intervention.

Main Results:

• The intervention group showed significantly improved team development compared to the control group (p=0.007).
• While some individual patient safety attitude items improved, the overall Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) scores did not show statistically significant improvement between groups (p=0.36).
• The implementation of the TeamSTEPPS curriculum was feasible within the block clinic model.

Conclusions:

• A TeamSTEPPS-based interprofessional teamwork curriculum can be successfully implemented in an IM resident continuity clinic.
• The curriculum effectively enhanced team development and demonstrated potential for improving safety attitudes.
• Further assessment of clinical and educational outcomes is warranted to fully understand the curriculum's impact.