Team Training in Health Care: A Review of Team Training and a Look Toward The Future

During the last few years, the medical field has developed several medical-team training (MTT) programs, some implemented in the military and some developed for commercial medicine. Some of these programs are domain-specific (e.g., anesthesia), whereas others are multi-disciplinary. Some rely heavily on state-of-the-art simulators, whereas others primarily use classroom techniques. Despite these differences, all share the common goal of reducing the number of medical errors via the application of teamwork-skills training while being heavily inspired by Crew Resource Management (CRM), a sub-domain of team training.  

This paper reviews the evidence-base for two categories of medical team training, simulator-based programs and classroom-based programs. Specifically, we examine the purpose and strategy of each and then review the reported empirical evidence. In addition, for three of four classroom-based programs we report the results from a series of course observations, curriculum reviews, instructor interviews, and an independent assessment of participant reactions. Finally, on the basis of the evidence reviewed, we present a set of recommendations for how the health care community can evolve medical team training in the future.