Substitutes for leadership in anaesthesia teams and their impact on leadership effectiveness

The Standardization of the Emergency Department Response to Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) Events: Human Factors/Ergonomics Approach

OBJECTIVE

To provide standardized recommendations for the emergency department (ED) response to chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) events by combining the human factors/ergonomics method of hierarchical task analysis with the theoretical framework for Work as Imagined versus Work as Done.

METHODS

Document analyses were used to represent CBRN response operational procedures. Semi-structured interviews using scenario cards were carried out with 57 first receivers (ED staff) to represent CBRN practice at 2 acute hospitals in England.

RESULTS

Variability existed in general organizational responsibilities associated with the CBRN response. Variability was further evident in top level CBRN tasks and CBRN phases at both EDs. Operational procedures focused on tasks such as documentation, checking, and timing. CBRN practice focused on patient needs through assessment, treatment, and diagnosis.

CONCLUSION

The findings provide top-down and bottom-up insights to enhance the ED CBRN response through standardization. The standardized CBRN action card template embeds the choice approach to standardization. The standardized CBRN framework implements the streamlined categorization of CBRN phases. Work as Imagined versus Work as Done is a useful theoretical framework to unpack a complex sociotechnical system, and hierarchical task analysis is an effective system mapping tool in health care.

Exploring everyday work as a dynamic non-event and adaptations to manage safety in intraoperative anaesthesia care: an interview study

BACKGROUND

Safety has been described as a dynamic non-event and as constantly present in professionals' work processes. Investigating management of complex everyday situations may create an opportunity to elucidate safety management. Anaesthesia has been at the frontline of enhancing patient safety - testing and implementing knowledge from other high-reliability industries, such as aviation, in the complex, adaptive system of an operating room. The aim of this study was to explore factors supporting anaesthesia nurses and anaesthesiologists in managing complex everyday situations during intraoperative anaesthesia care processes.

METHODS

Individual interviews with anaesthesia nurses (n = 9) and anaesthesiologists (n = 6) using cognitive task analysis (CTA) on case scenarios from previous prospective, structured observations. The interviews were analysed using the framework method.

RESULTS

During intraoperative anaesthesia care, management of everyday complex situations is sustained through preparedness, support for mindful practices, and monitoring and noticing complex situations and managing them. The prerequisites are created at the organization level. Managers should ensure adequate resources in the form of trained personnel, equipment and time, team and personnel sustainability and early planning of work. Management of complex situations benefits from high-quality teamwork and non-technical skills (NTS), such as communication, leadership and shared situational awareness.

CONCLUSION

Adequate resources, stability in team compositions and safe boundaries for practice with shared baselines for reoccurring tasks where all viewed as important prerequisites for managing complex everyday work. When and how NTS are used in a specific clinical context depends on having the right organizational prerequisites and a deep expertise of the relevant clinical processes. Methods like CTA can reveal the tacit competence of experienced staff, guide contextualized training in specific contexts and inform the design of safe perioperative work practices, ensuring adequate capacity for adaptation.

Shared Leadership in Healthcare Action Teams: A Systematic Review

OBJECTIVES

The aims of this review were to consolidate the reported literature describing shared leadership in healthcare action teams (HCATs) and to review the reported outcomes related to leadership sharing in healthcare emergencies.

METHODS

A systematic search of the English language literature before November 2017 was performed using PsycINFO, MEDLINE, PubMed, CINAHL, and EMBASE. Articles describing sharing of leadership functions in HCATs were included. Healthcare teams performing routine work were excluded. Studies were reviewed for type of leadership sharing and sharing-related outcomes.

RESULTS

Thirty-three articles met the inclusion criteria. A variety of shared leadership models were described across the following three categories: spontaneous collaboration, intuitive working relations, and institutionalized practices. While leadership sharing has the potential for both positive and negative influences on team performance, only six articles reported outcomes potentially attributable to shared leadership.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite strong evidence for a positive relationship between shared leadership and team performance in other domains, there is limited literature describing shared leadership models in HCATs. The association between shared leadership and team performance in HCATs is a rich area for further investigation.

Exploring the human factors of prescribing errors in paediatric intensive care units

OBJECTIVE

To explore the factors contributing to prescribing error in paediatric intensive care units (PICUs) using a human factors approach based on Reason's theory of error causation to support planning of interventions to mitigate slips and lapses, rules-based mistakes and knowledge-based mistakes.

METHODS

A hierarchical task analysis (HTA) of prescribing was conducted using documentary analysis. Eleven semistructured interviews with prescribers were conducted using vignettes and were analysed using template analysis. Contributory factors were identified through the interviews and were related to tasks in the HTA by an expert panel involving a PICU clinician, nurse and pharmacist.

RESULTS

Prescribing in PICU is composed of 30 subtasks. Our findings indicate that cognitive burden was the main contributory factor of prescribing error. This manifested in two ways: physical, associated with fatigue, distraction and interruption, and poor information transfer; and psychological, related to inexperience, changing workload and insufficient decision support information. Physical burden was associated with errors of omission or selection; psychological burden was linked to errors related to a lack of knowledge and/or awareness. Social control through nursing staff was the only identified control step. This control was dysfunctional at times as nurses were part of an informal mechanism to support decision making, was ineffective.

CONCLUSIONS

Cognitive burden on prescribers is the principal latent factor contributing to prescribing error. This research suggests that interventions relating to skill mix, and communication and presentation of information may be effective at mitigating rule and knowledge-based mistakes. Mitigating fatigue and standardising procedures may minimise slips and lapses.

Leadership sharing in maternity emergency teams: a retrospective cohort study in simulation

Background

Shared leadership is associated with improved team performance in many domains, but little is understood about how leadership is shared spontaneously in maternity emergency teams, and if it is associated with improved team performance.

Methods

A video analysis study of multidisciplinary teams attending a maternity emergency management course was performed at a simulation centre colocated with a tertiary maternity hospital. Sixteen teams responding to a simulated postpartum haemorrhage were analysed between November 2016 and November 2017. Videos were transcribed, and utterances coded for leadership type using a coding system developed a priori. Distribution of leadership utterances between team members was calculated using the Gini coefficient. Teamwork was assessed using validated tools and clinical performance was assessed by time to perform a critical intervention and a checklist of required tasks.

Results

There was a significant sharing of leadership functions across the team despite the traditional recommendation for a singular leader, with the dominant leader only accounting for 58% of leadership utterances. There was no significant difference in Auckland Team Assessment Tool scores between high and low leadership sharing teams (5.02 vs 4.96, p=0.574). Time to critical intervention was shorter in low leadership sharing teams (193 s vs 312 s, p=0.018) but checklist completion did not differ significantly. Teams with better clinical performance had fewer leadership utterances beyond the dominant two leaders compared with poorer performing teams.

Conclusions

Leadership is spontaneously shared in maternity emergency teams despite the recommendation for singular leadership. Spontaneous leadership emerging from multiple team members does not appear to be associated with the improvements in team performance seen in other domains.

The dual nature of adaptive coordination in teams

Adaptive team coordination is a central topic in the team dynamics literature. Most team adaptation research to date addresses team responses to demands for flexibility triggered by dynamic external forces. Little explicit attention has been paid to demands for stability created by continued pressures on efficiency and control. To capture this dual nature of adaptive coordination, we propose to characterize adaptation triggers in terms of stability and flexibility demands and suggest four modes of adaptive coordination that enable teams to adequately balance these demands. Grounded in team as well as organizational literatures, we explicate the specific patterns of coordination mechanisms comprising each mode of coordination, termed experiential, exploitative, exploratory, and ambidextrous coordination. The new insights offered into team adaptive coordination can spur research that further integrates team and organizational perspectives on adaptation processes.

Envisioning successful teamwork: An exploratory qualitative study of team processes used by nursing teams in a paediatric hospital unit

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

To explore how team processes support nursing teams in hospital units during every day work.

BACKGROUND

Due to their close proximity to patients, nurses are central to the process of maintaining patient safety. Globally, changes in models of care delivery by nurses, inclusive of team nursing are being considered.

DESIGN AND METHODS

This qualitative study used purposive sampling in a single hospital and participants were nurses employed to work on a paediatric unit. Data were collected using nonparticipant observation. Thematic analysis was used to analyse and code data to create themes.

RESULTS

Three clear themes emerged. Theme 1: "We are a close knit team"; Behaviours building a successful team - outlines expectations regarding how members are to behave when establishing, nurturing and managing a team. Theme 2: "Onto it"; Ways of interacting with each other - Identifies the expected pattern of relating within the team which contribute to shared understanding and actions. Theme 3: "No point in second guessing"; Maintaining a global view of the unit - focuses on the processes for monitoring and reporting signals that team performance is on course or breaking down and includes accepting responsibility to lead the team and team members having a widespread sensitivity to what needs to happen.

CONCLUSION

Essential to successful teamwork is the interplay and mutuality of team members and team leaders.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE

Leadership behaviours exhibited in this study provide useful insights to how informal and shared or distributed leadership of teams may be achieved. Without buy-in from team members, teams may not achieve successful desired outcomes. It is not sufficient for teams to rely on current successful outcomes, as they need to be on the look-out for new ways to ensure that they can anticipate possible risks or threats to the team before harm is done.

DE-CODE: a coding scheme for assessing debriefing interactions

Debriefings are crucial for learning during simulation-based training (SBT). Although the quality of debriefings is very important for SBT, few studies have examined actual debriefing conversations. Investigating debriefing conversations is important for identifying typical debriefer–learner interaction patterns, obtaining insights into associations between debriefers’ communication and learners’ reflection and comparing different debriefing approaches. We aim at contributing to the science of debriefings by developing DE-CODE, a valid and reliable coding scheme for assessing debriefers’ and learners’ communication in debriefings. It is applicable for both direct, on-site observations and video-based coding.

Methods

The coding scheme was developed both deductively and inductively from literature on team learning and debriefing and observing debriefings during SBT, respectively. Inter-rater reliability was calculated using Cohen’s kappa. DE-CODE was tested for both live and video-based coding.

Results

DE-CODE consists of 32 codes for debriefers’ communication and 15 codes for learners’ communication. For live coding, coders achieved good inter-rater reliabilities with the exception of four codes for debriefers’ communication and two codes for learners’ communication. For video-based coding, coders achieved substantial inter-rater reliabilities with the exception of five codes for debriefers’ communication and three codes for learners’ communication.

Conclusion

DE-CODE is designed as micro-level measurement tool for coding debriefing conversations applicable to any debriefing of SBT in any field (except for the code medical input). It is reliable for direct, on-site observations as well as for video-based coding. DE-CODE is intended to allow for obtaining insights into what works and what does not work during debriefings and contribute to the science of debriefing.

Integrating teamwork, clinician occupational well-being and patient safety - development of a conceptual framework based on a systematic review

BACKGROUND

There is growing evidence that teamwork in hospitals is related to both patient outcomes and clinician occupational well-being. Furthermore, clinician well-being is associated with patient safety. Despite considerable research activity, few studies include all three concepts, and their interrelations have not yet been investigated systematically. To advance our understanding of these potentially complex interrelations we propose an integrative framework taking into account current evidence and research gaps identified in a systematic review.

METHODS

We conducted a literature search in six major databases (Medline, PsycArticles, PsycInfo, Psyndex, ScienceDirect, and Web of Knowledge). Inclusion criteria were: peer reviewed papers published between January 2000 and June 2015 investigating a statistical relationship between at least two of the three concepts; teamwork, patient safety, and clinician occupational well-being in hospital settings, including practicing nurses and physicians. We assessed methodological quality using a standardized rating system and qualitatively appraised and extracted relevant data, such as instruments, analyses and outcomes.

RESULTS

The 98 studies included in this review were highly diverse regarding quality, methodology and outcomes. We found support for the existence of independent associations between teamwork, clinician occupational well-being and patient safety. However, we identified several conceptual and methodological limitations. The main barrier to advancing our understanding of the causal relationships between teamwork, clinician well-being and patient safety is the lack of an integrative, theory-based, and methodologically thorough approach investigating the three concepts simultaneously and longitudinally. Based on psychological theory and our findings, we developed an integrative framework that addresses these limitations and proposes mechanisms by which these concepts might be linked.

CONCLUSION

Knowledge about the mechanisms underlying the relationships between these concepts helps to identify avenues for future research, aimed at benefiting clinicians and patients by using the synergies between teamwork, clinician occupational well-being and patient safety.

Team-Centric Leadership: An Integrative Review

This integrative review focuses on leadership in the context of work groups and teams: team-centric leadership. Although the process of leadership is largely viewed as one of social influence, most theories of leadership are agnostic about the social units and context within which it occurs. The review examines recent research on mainstream leadership theories—transformational leadership and leader-member exchange—that have contextualized leadership in work teams and also on team-centric leadership theories—shared and functional leadership—that are explicitly team centric. For each theory, we examine its conceptualization and evolution, how well it maps to the input-process-output heuristic of team effectiveness (including moderators indicative of the context, process dynamics, and feedback loops), and the quality of research methods that are employed. The discussion concludes with 14 recommendations designed to advance each type of team-centric leadership and to promote more integration and synergy across the approaches in future research.

Simulation With PARTS (Phase-Augmented Research and Training Scenarios): A Structure Facilitating Research and Assessment in Simulation

INTRODUCTION

Assessment in simulation is gaining importance, as are scenario design methods increasing opportunity for assessment. We present our approach to improving measurement in complex scenarios using PARTS [Phase-Augmented Research and Training Scenarios], essentially separating cases into clearly delineated phases.

METHODS

We created 7 PARTS with real-time rating instruments and tested these in 63 cases during 4 weeks of simulation. Reliability was tested by comparing real-time rating with postsimulation video-based rating using the same instrument. Validity was tested by comparing preintervention and postintervention total results, by examining the difference in improvement when focusing on the phase-specific results addressed by the intervention, and further explored by trying to demonstrate the discrete improvement expected from proficiency in the rare occurrence of leader inclusive behavior.

RESULTS

Intraclass correlations [3,1] between real-time and postsimulation ratings were 0.951 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.794-0.990), 1.00 (95% CI, --to--), 0.948 (95% CI, 0.783-0.989), and 0.995 (95% CI, 0.977-0.999) for 3 phase-specific scores and total scenario score, respectively. Paired t tests of prelecture-postlecture performance showed an improvement of 14.26% (bias-corrected and accelerated bootstrap [BCa] 95% CI, 4.71-23.82; P = 0.009) for total performance but of 28.57% (BCa 95% CI, 13.84-43.30; P = 0.002) for performance in the respective phase. The correlation of total scenario performance with leader inclusiveness was not significant (rs = 0.228; BCa 95% CI. -0.082 to 0.520; P = 0.119) but significant for specific phase performance (rs = 0.392; BCa 95% CI, 0.118-0.632; P = 0.006).

CONCLUSIONS

The PARTS allowed for improved reliability and validity of measurements in complex scenarios.

Co-ACT--a framework for observing coordination behaviour in acute care teams

BACKGROUND

Acute care teams (ACTs) represent action teams, that is, teams in which members with specialised roles must coordinate their actions during intense situations, often under high time pressure and with unstable team membership. Using behaviour observation, patient safety research has been focusing on defining teamwork behaviours-particularly coordination-that are critical for patient safety during these intense situations. As one result of this divergent research landscape, the number, scope and variety of applied behaviour observation taxonomies are growing, making comparison and convergent integration of research findings difficult.

AIM

To facilitate future ACT research by presenting a framework that provides a shared language of teamwork behaviours, allows for comparing previous and future ACT research and offers a measurement tool for ACT observation.

METHOD

Based on teamwork theory and empirical evidence, we developed Co-ACT-the Framework for Observing Coordination Behaviour in ACT. Integrating two previous, extensive taxonomies into Co-ACT, we also suggested 12 behavioural codes for which we determined inter-rater reliability by analysing the teamwork of videotaped anaesthesia teams in the clinical setting.

RESULTS

The Co-ACT framework consists of four quadrants organised along two dimensions (explicit vs implicit coordination; action vs information coordination). Each quadrant provides three categories for which Cohen's κ overall value was substantial; but values for single categories varied considerably.

CONCLUSIONS

Co-ACT provides a framework for organising behaviour codes and offers respective categories for succinctly measuring teamwork in ACTs. Furthermore, it has the potential to allow for guiding and comparing ACTs study results. Future work using Co-ACT in different research and training settings will show how well it can generally be applied across ACTs.

Adaptation in anaesthesia team coordination in response to a simulated critical event and its relationship to clinical performance

BACKGROUND

Recent studies in anaesthesia and intensive care indicate that a team's ability to adapt its coordination activities to changing situational demands is crucial for effective teamwork and thus, safe patient care. This study addresses the relationship between adaptation of team coordination and markers of clinical performance in response to a critical event, particularly regarding which types of coordination activities are used and which team member engages in those coordination activities.

METHODS

Video recordings of 15 two-person anaesthesia teams (anaesthesia trainee plus anaesthesia nurse) performing a simulated induction of general anaesthesia were coded, using a structured observation system for coordination activities. The simulation involved a critical event-asystole during laryngoscopy. Clinical performance was assessed using two separate reaction times related to the critical event.

RESULTS

Analyses of variance revealed a significant effect of the critical event on team coordination: after the occurrence of the asystole, team members adapted their coordination activities by spending more time on information management-a specific type of coordination activity (F(1,28)=15.17, P=0.001). No significant effect was found for task management. The increase in information management was related to faster decisions regarding how to respond to the critical event, but only for trainees and not for nurses.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings support the claim that adaptation of coordination activities is related to improved team performance in healthcare. Moreover, adaptation and its relationship to team performance were found to vary with regard to type of coordination activities and team member.