In June 2016 Journal of Applied Psychology Authors Eduardo Salas, Lauren Benishek, Megan Grigory and Ashley Hughes in the article titled “Saving Lives: A Meta-Analysis of Training Teams in Healthcare” decided to answer the question of whether team training in health is effective, whether it leads to a reduction in mortality and improved results regarding health.
Their study showed that a preventable medical error occurs in each of the three hospitalizations and results in 98,000 deaths per year, which is confirmed by Humans tend to make mistakes. Teamwork errors due to communication failures account for 68.3% of these errors. Thus, effective team training is needed to reduce errors in hospitals and outpatient sites.
The authors used the meta-analysis method to determine if effective health education methods exist that can have a significant effect on medical errors, which in turn will improve results and reduce costs by eliminating the costs associated with errors. Meta-analysis is an extensive study of existing literature to answer research questions posed by a research group or authors.
The research team asked three questions:
1. Is the health care team training effective?
2. What are the conditions for effective training of the health care team?
3. How does the training of the health care team influence the final organizational results and patient outcomes?
The team has limited its meta-analysis to medical teams, despite the fact that there is a lot of research on the effectiveness of training teams in other industries and service organizations. The team believes that healthcare teams are significantly different from teams in other areas so much so that there can be much more workload in healthcare. That is, group membership is not always static, especially on sites such as hospitals and outpatient surgical centers. These sites have more service transfers.
Despite the greater flexibility in group membership at medical facilities, the roles are clearly defined. For example, the role of a medical assistant in a primary care setting is well defined, even if different masters can work with one doctor. These roles are additionally defined and limited by the state license. As the research group stated in its article, “these functions make the training of the healthcare team a unique form of education, which is likely to be developed and implemented differently than training in more traditional teams ...”
The team evaluated their research papers using the Kirkpatrick training effectiveness model, a widely used structure for evaluating team training. It consists of four assessment areas:
1. Student reaction
2. Training
3. Transfer
4. Results
reaction it is the degree to which the learner finds a useful instruction or the extent to which he uses it. Training defined as a relatively constant change in knowledge, skills and abilities. The authors note that team training is not a complicated skill, like learning to draw blood. Rather, it is a skill skill. Some researchers doubt whether the acquisition of these mental commands can be effectively assessed. A team of authors effectively claims that this is possible.
Transfer is the use of trained knowledge, skills and abilities in the workplace. That is, can team training be effectively applied in working conditions? results these are consequences of patient health education, a decrease in medical errors, an improvement in patient satisfaction and a reduction in the cost of care.
To ensure that the changes in these four areas were “real,” the team used only literature that had both preliminary assessments and, after evaluation, to see if there were statistically significant changes in four areas.
Using this assessment, the team was able to answer three questions that it asked. First, health education is effective. Training the health care team is closely related to training in other industries and service organizations.
Secondly, learning is effective, surprisingly, regardless of the design and implementation of learning, the characteristics of the learners and the characteristics of the work environment. Using multiple learning strategies compared to a single learning strategy is irrelevant. Work environment modeling is not required. Training can take place in a standard classroom.
Training is effective for all employees regardless of certification. Effective training of all staff, as well as administrative staff. Team training is also effective in all care settings.
Finally, a team meta-analysis shows that, as part of the Kirkpatrick heading training, it’s effective to achieve the organizational goals of better care at lower costs with higher patient satisfaction. The reaction to the listener is not as important as learning and transmitting the results. It is important that trainers use both preliminary and post-training assessments to determine whether training in skills, knowledge and skills has been learned and transferred to the work site. Learning effectiveness must always be evaluated so that curricula can be consistently improved.
