Impact of clinical leadership in teams’ course on quality, efficiency, responsiveness and trust in the emergency department: study protocol of a trailing research study

INTRODUCTION: Clinical leadership has long been recognised as critical for optimising patient safety, quality of care and interprofessional teamwork in busy and stressful healthcare settings. There is a need to compensate for the absence of the conventional mentor-to-apprentice transfer of clinical leadership knowledge and skills. While young doctors and nurses are increasingly proficient in medical, surgical and technical skills, their training in, and knowledge of clinical leadership skills, is not adequate to meet the demands for these non-technical skills in the emergency department. Thus, the purpose of the paper is to present and discuss the study protocol of clinical leadership in a course for teams that aims to improve quality, efficiency, responsiveness of healthcare services and collegial trust in the emergency department. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The study employs a trailing research design using multiple quantitative and qualitative methods in the summative (pretest and post-test) and formative evaluation. Quantitative data have been collected from a patient questionnaire, the emergency departments’ database and by the observation of team performance. Qualitative data have been collected by shadowing healthcare professionals and through focus group interviews. To ensure trustworthiness in the data analysis, we will apply member checks and analyst triangulation, in addition to providing contextual and sample description to allow for evaluation of transferability of our results to other contexts and groups. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The study is approved by the ethics committee of the western part of Norway and the hospital. The study is based on voluntary participation and informed written consent. Informants can withdraw at any point in time. The results will be disseminated at research conferences, peer review journals and through public presentations to people outside the scientific community.