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PURPOSE: Teaching interprofessional teamwork skills is a goal of interprofessional education. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between IP teamwork skills, attitudes and clinical outcomes in a simulated clinical setting. METHODS: One hundred-twenty health professions students (medicine, pharmacy, physician assistant) worked in interprofessional teams to manage a "patient" in a health care simulation setting. Students completed the Interdisciplinary Education Perception Scale (IEPS) attitudinal survey instrument. Students' responses were averaged by team to create an IEPS attitudes score. Teamwork skills for each team were rated by trained observers using a checklist to calculate a teamwork score (TWS). Clinical outcome scores (COS) were determined by summation of completed clinical tasks performed by the team based on an expert developed checklist. Regression analyses were conducted to determine the relationship of IEPS and TWS with COS. RESULTS: IEPS score was not a significant predictor of COS (p=0.054), but TWS was a significant predictor (p< 0.001) of COS. Results suggest that in a simulated clinical setting, students' interprofessional teamwork skills are significant predictors of positive clinical outcomes. CONCLUSION: Interprofessional curricular models that produce effective teamwork skills can improve student performance in clinical environments and likely improve teamwork practice to positively affect patient care outcomes. J Allied Health 2013; 42(1):e1-e6.
TEAMWORK SKILLS are essential components of effective interprofessional collaboration. Communication failures and break-downs in team functions have been associated with medical errors.1-3 The Institute of Medicine endorses effective communication and teamwork as essential components for the delivery of high quality and safe patient care.4 Interprofessional competency frameworks developed in Canada and the United States both include teamwork skills as fundamental competencies for successful interprofessional collaboration.5 Six national associations of schools of the health professions formed a collaborative promoting interprofessional education, the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC).6
Health professions students need opportunities to acquire and apply teamwork skills suitable for interprofessional collaborative practice, particularly within patient care contexts. High-fidelity simulators offer a unique learning experience for health professions students. A human patient simulator is a mannequin interfaced with a computer program that can produce physiologic responses to student actions including changes in the mannequin's simulated heart rhythm, blood pressure, respiratory rate, pulse and heart sounds. Human patient simulators provide a context for students to assume the responsibility for...