Improving Clinical Performance of an Interprofessional Emergency Medical Team Through a One-day Crisis Resource Management Training

INTRODUCTION: Errors are frequent in health care and Emergency Departments are one of the riskiest areas due to frequent changes of team composition, complexity and variety of the cases and difficulties encountered in managing multiple patients. As the majority of clinical errors are the results of human factors and not technical in nature or due to the lack of knowledge, a training focused on these factors appears to be necessary. Crisis resource management (CRM), a tool that was developed initially by the aviation industry and then adopted by different medical specialties as anesthesia and emergency medicine, has been associated with decreased error rates. THE AIM OF THE STUDY: To assess whether a single day CRM training, combining didactic and simulation sessions, improves the clinical performance of an interprofessional emergency medical team. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Seventy health professionals with different qualifications, working in an emergency department, were enrolled in the study. Twenty individual interprofessional teams were created. Each team was assessed before and after the training, through two in situ simulated exercises. The exercises were videotaped and were evaluated by two assessors who were blinded as to whether it was the initial or the final exercise. Objective measurement of clinical team performance was performed using a checklist that was designed for each scenario and included essential assessment items for the diagnosis and treatment of a critical patient, with the focus on key actions and decisions. The intervention consisted of a one-day training, combining didactic and simulation sessions, followed by instructor facilitated debriefing. All participants went through this training after the initial assessment exercises. RESULTS: An improvement was seen in most of the measured clinical parameters. CONCLUSION: Our study supports the use of combined CRM training for improving the clinical performance of an interprofessional emergency team. Empirically this may improve the patient outcome.