A predeployment trauma team training course creates confidence in teamwork and clinical skills: a post-Afghanistan deployment validation study of Canadian Forces healthcare personnel.

BACKGROUND

The 10-day Intensive Trauma Team Training Course (ITTTC) was developed by the Canadian Forces (CFs) to teach teamwork and clinical trauma skills to military healthcare personnel before deploying to Afghanistan. This article attempts to validate the impact of the ITTTC by surveying participants postdeployment.

METHODS

A survey consisting of Likert-type multiple-choice questions was created and sent to all previous ITTTC participants. The survey asked respondents to rate their confidence in applying teamwork skills and clinical skills learned in the ITTTC. It explored the relevancy of objectives and participants' prior familiarity with the objectives. The impact of different training modalities was also surveyed.

RESULTS

The survey showed that on average 84.29% of participants were "confident" or "very confident" in applying teamwork skills to their subsequent clinical experience and 52.10% were "confident" or "very confident" in applying clinical knowledge and skills. On average 43.74% of participants were "familiar" or "very familiar" with the clinical topics before the course, indicating the importance of training these skills. Participants found that clinical shadowing was significantly less valuable in training clinical skills than either animal laboratory experience or experience in human patient simulators; 68.57% respondents thought that ITTTC was "important" or "very important" in their training.

CONCLUSIONS

The ITTTC created lasting self-reported confidence in CFs healthcare personnel surveyed upon return from Afghanistan. This validates the importance of the course for the training of CFs healthcare personnel and supports the value of team training in other areas of trauma and medicine.