Evaluating Team Performance: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Effective teamwork amongst healthcare professionals has been shown to correlate with positive patient outcomes. This paper reviews research conducted with healthcare professionals to determine the extent to which assessments of team performance had been developed and evaluated between 2006 and 2012. The National Library of Medicine's indexed database PubMed was used to identify potential articles for inclusion in the review. Of the 549 articles retrieved, 158 articles were selected for inclusion in the study based on review of the article abstracts. Of the 158 articles, 26 of the articles examined psychometric characteristics of the measures. Most instruments were observation checklists, and research was conducted primarily in emergency medicine and surgery. Measures developed that can be used in a variety of healthcare settings, in addition to surgery and acute care, will be invaluable as the complexity of providing adequate patient care will increasingly require the coordinated efforts of team members.