Half-Day Training Content

Components you can include in the Introduction for a half-day training include:

Quick introductions of trainers and participants: 3 minutes
Abbreviated teamwork exercise: 10 minutes
Course objectives, overview, resources, and rationale: 2 minutes
Patient story video and reactions: 7 minutes
Characteristics of and barriers to high-performing teams: 2 minutes

In a half-day training, the introduction should not take more than 25 minutes to cover the areas listed above. You may choose to spend more time on some of these activities and to omit others. Alternatively, you may want to include other parts of the Introduction instead of some of the components noted above. In a half-day course, the focus should be on specific, usable tools. Keep the introduction short; use the teamwork exercise to introduce some of the tools and their value. Then, promptly proceed to the modules.

Teaching Goals

It's important to continuously reinforce your enthusiasm for TeamSTEPPS 3.0 and its importance to patients and healthcare workers. Continue to foster mutual respect, fun, and transparency using active learning and listening throughout the section. Specific goals for teaching this section are identified below.

Describe the TeamSTEPPS 3.0 course.
Describe the impact of errors and why they occur.
Describe the TeamSTEPPS 3.0 framework.
State the outcomes of the TeamSTEPPS 3.0 framework.

The sequence of topics as follows will help achieve the four goals.

Introductions

Display Slide 2 while doing brief introductions. Ask each faculty member to introduce themselves in 30 seconds or less by providing their name, what they do in the organization, and why they're excited to be teaching TeamSTEPPS 3.0. Then give trainees 2 minutes to provide similar introductions to people in their group or sitting near them. If you can, review the backgrounds of participants based on registration information so that you can adapt your examples to reflect their clinical contexts and teamwork challenges.

Teamwork Exercise

As time permits, use Slides 3-5 to lead the teamwork exercise using instructions provided here. You can save time by only doing one of the two rounds, but you may want to allow a bit more planning time to ensure Round 1 goes fairly well. Use the discussion to call out tools that you’re going to focus on during the remainder of your training.

Course Objectives, Overview, Resources, and Rationale

Objectives

Adjust Slide 6 to focus on your specific objectives for the half-day training. Stress that reaching the goal of using TeamSTEPPS to create a culture of safety that protects all patients in the care system will depend on what participants do after the training. Encourage them to think about their own next steps to make the training worthwhile.

Overview

Adjust Slides 7–8 to provide an overview of your schedule as well as what will be covered. If the entire training is focused on the four modules, Slide 8 should be dropped.

The TeamSTEPPS half-day course will focus on four core teamwork skills, including:

Module 1: Communication—Provides tools and strategies for communicating effectively through standardized information exchange strategies such as SBAR, check-back, call-out, and handoff.
Module 2: Team Leadership—Defines a team and its members, including patients and their families, describes characteristics of high-performing teams, and addresses how to lead teams effectively using tools such as briefs, huddles, and debriefs.
Module 3: Situation Monitoring—Describes the importance of team members’ gaining or maintaining an accurate awareness or understanding of the situation in which the team is functioning, and outcomes of situation monitoring, including a shared mental model among team members.
Module 4: Mutual Support—Describes approaches for providing mutual support, or "backup behavior," that allows teams to become self-correcting, distribute workload effectively, provide effective feedback, and manage conflict.

Resources To Support TeamSTEPPS Users

Reference Slide 10 while you explain that all TeamSTEPPS resources have been consolidated and optimized for online access and use. The website includes:

A Pocket Guide and downloadable Pocket Guide app that provide quick summaries of key TeamSTEPPS concepts and tools. The app is being updated to match the new TeamSTEPPS 3.0 curriculum. A new version of the app will be available in fall 2023.
Welcome Guides focused on diverse types of TeamSTEPPS users such as patients and family caregivers, frontline staff, and trainers.
Resources related to each of the four modules that are grouped into:
- Section 1: A quick overview (what is contained in the Pocket Guide).
- Section 2: Explanations of key concepts and tools, including examples and materials relevant to different care settings and types of teams.
- Section 3: Resources for people teaching TeamSTEPPS to others.
- Section 4: Implementation resources that may be covered on day 2 of a 2-day training and are unlikely to be included in shorter trainings.
Video examples and training units that are embedded into the four modules.

Rationale for TeamSTEPPS

If it's important to your class, explain that when TeamSTEPPS was created, the patient safety movement was in its infancy and the groundbreaking IOM (now NAM) report To Err Is Human had only recently been released.¹ Today, TeamSTEPPS is part of the ongoing patient safety movement and the training builds on lessons and research about the key role teams play in preserving patient safety. Note that some key research is summarized on the AHRQ TeamSTEPPS website and that you’ll introduce other key findings throughout the training.

Patient Story Video and Reactions

TeamSTEPPS 3.0 exists to make patient care safe in every care setting and for every patient. Beginning the training with a patient story like the one introduced on Slide 11 will help keep the patient central to your training. You may want to have a patient or family caregiver who is functioning as one of the instructors share their story, or have a patient attend so they can share their story. Because many trainings are now done virtually and include virtual instructors, including patients is easier than it has been in the past. Or you may want to choose one of the available patient story videos on the TeamSTEPPS 3.0 website (see the description of three new patient videos in section 2). Some stories describe teamwork failures with tragic consequences. Others describe effective teamwork and communication that led to a positive outcome.

Choose one of these stories and have participants listen to it. Either in small groups or as a class, ask participants to discuss:

What breakdowns in teamwork occurred in the story that could have been avoided?
How could effective teamwork help protect and support patients and families?
If participant responses indicate a skill, tool, or strategy taught in the course but participants use different terminology, rephrase the response back to them using the TeamSTEPPS terminology.
If any of the participants answer negatively, focus the discussion on improvement opportunities.
How does being part of low- and high-performing teams affect your own well-being and job satisfaction?

Characteristics of and Barriers to High-Performing Teams

Use the patient story discussion to note that the story illustrates characteristics of high-performing teams as well as barriers to high performance. Show the two relevant slides (12 and 13) and note that you'll be addressing many of these as you discuss the four TeamSTEPPS 3.0 modules.

Note

Institute of Medicine. 2000. To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. DOI: 10.17226/9728. Accessed March 2, 2023.

SHARE: