Investigating pediatric trauma team communication effectiveness phase two: Achieving inter-rater reliability for the Assessment of Pediatric Resuscitation Communication Team Assessment

Abstract

Trauma team communication errors made during pediatric resuscitations compromise both patient and healthcare provider safety. Unnecessary patient injury and even death have been linked to miscommunication among trauma team members. In addition, trauma team members are experiencing a steady increase in malpractice claims brought against them due to medical errors that occurred because of miscommunication among team members. Although miscommunication is a problem during trauma resuscitations, few instruments exist to evaluate the communication effectiveness between trauma team members during resuscitations. To fill this void, the Assessment of Pediatric Resuscitation Communication Team Assessment (APRC-TA) was created to assess the communication effectiveness of trauma teams during resuscitations. The instrument was designed to identify specific team communication errors that occur during resuscitations. The purpose of this study is to further validate the APRC-TA by determining the inter-rater reliability of the instrument. Once the APRC-TA is validated, healthcare providers and researchers will be able to use the instrument to identify team communication errors and improve the overall communication effectiveness of trauma resuscitations.

Keywords:

• Communication
• Trauma
• Resuscitation
• Team
• Validation