Role confusion and self-assessment in interprofessional trauma teams.

BACKGROUND

Trauma care requires coordinating an interprofessional team, with formative feedback on teamwork skills. We hypothesized nurses and surgeons have different perceptions regarding roles during resuscitation; that nurses' teamwork self-assessment differs from experts', and that video debriefing might improve accuracy of self-assessment.

METHODS

Trauma nurses and surgeons were surveyed regarding resuscitation responsibilities. Subsequently, nurses joined interprofessional teams in simulated trauma resuscitations. After each resuscitation, nurses and teamwork experts independently scored teamwork (T-NOTECHS). After video debriefing, nurses repeated T-NOTECHS self-assessment.

RESULTS

Nurses and surgeons assumed significantly more responsibility by their own profession for 71% of resuscitation tasks. Nurses' overall T-NOTECHS ratings were slightly higher than experts'. This was evident in all T-NOTECHS subdomains except "leadership," but despite statistical significance the difference was small and clinically irrelevant. Video debriefing did not improve the accuracy of self-assessment.

CONCLUSIONS

Nurses and physicians demonstrated discordant perceptions of responsibilities. Nurses' self-assessment of teamwork was statistically, but not clinically significantly, higher than experts' in all domains except physician leadership.