Research to improve safe teamwork in complex healthcare

A large body of evidence demonstrates that effective teamwork by healthcare teams is crucial to maintain safe and effective patient care in complex care contexts. The complexity of healthcare is rapidly increasing, due to technological innovation, increasing healthcare specialization and decentralization of care provision. Teams urgently need innovative tools that support team interactions to increase their awareness of and responsiveness to complex healthcare situations. Both in centralized acute care settings and in decentralized chronic care settings there is an urgent need to deeper understand team performance in complex situations. And to apply this knowledge in the design and implementation of innovative tools in training and real-time application.

European training network

The Tools4Teams research project, coordinated by VUMC and led on TU/e side by Josette Gevers, aims to establish a doctoral training network under the MSCA-DN funding scheme. The network will prepare the next generation of teamwork experts to contribute new insights and smart technologies for safe and effective care. Tools4Teams brings together expertise from social and technical sciences, human-centered design, education, and clinical specialties. The research team will be cooperating with non-academic partners from industry, healthcare, and education to reach both scientific and societal impact.

Mixed-methods design

Tools4Teams recognizes and builds upon the transformative opportunities created by the application of behavioral sciences methodologies in healthcare and extends it with human- centered design of tools to target the most challenging problems in the delivery of safe and effective care. Mixed-methods designs will be applied to advance scientific knowledge and create evidence-based training and tools:

• to support team interaction processes;
• to integrate patient involvement in teamwork;
• to support the performance of multi-team systems;
• to facilitate innovative training applications (i.e. virtual and augmented reality).

This research has practical implications for healthcare as a whole and will benefit clinical teams and the patients to whom they provide care.

The research is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie doctoral network, funded by the European Union