Effective coordination in medical emergency teams: The moderating role of task type

Abstract

Coordination in health care action teams is an important factor in clinical performance and patient safety. Implementing a high-fidelity in situ simulation study, we investigated the performance-relevant effects of task distribution, provide information without request (PIWR) and closed-loop communication (CLC) in 68 medical emergency teams (METs) composed of fully qualified clinicians. We differentiated between two task types: algorithm-driven and knowledge-driven tasks. We assigned two different emergency tasks to each task type. We proposed not only a direct relationship between the three coordination behaviours and clinical performance, but also a moderating role for the type of task. Only CLC was related to performance and also moderated by task type. There was no relationship between the coordination behaviours task distribution and PIWR and performance. We discuss the differential effects of the three coordination behaviours on performance and emphasize the importance of the task in team research. In particular, we highlight theoretical and practical implications.

Keywords:

• Teamwork
• Coordination
• Team processes
• Patient safety, Clinical performance

The authors thank Johanna Vogt, Surabhi Pasarakonda, and Steven Coka for their help with video coding, Laurenz Meier for his help with data analysis and Zhike Lei and Dana Unger for their helpful comments on the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation [grant number PP00P1_128616].