MEASURING TEAMWORK AND CONFLICT AMONG EMERGENCY MEDICAL TECHNICIAN PERSONNEL

    Authors

    P. D. Patterson; M. D. Weaver; S. J. Weaver; M. A. Rosen; G. Todorova; L. R. Weingart; D. Krackhardt; J. R. Lave; R. M. Arnold; D. M. Yealy;E. Salas

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Prehosp. Emerg. Care

    Keywords

    teamwork; conflict; safety; survey; emergency medical technicians; MEMBER FAMILIARITY; PERFORMANCE; SERVICES; QUALITY; MEMORY; Emergency Medicine; Public, Environmental & Occupational Health

    Abstract

    Objective. We sought to develop a reliable and valid tool for measuring teamwork among emergency medical technician (EMT) partnerships. Methods. We adapted existing scales and developed new items to measure components of teamwork. After recruiting a convenience sample of 39 agencies, we tested a 122-item draft survey tool (EMT-TEAMWORK). We performed a series of exploratory factor analyses (EFAs) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test reliability and construct validity, describing variation in domain and global scores using descriptive statistics. Results. We received 687 completed surveys. The EFAs identified a nine-factor solution. We labeled these factors 1) Team Orientation, 2) Team Structure & Leadership, 3) Partner Communication, Team Support, & Monitoring, 4) Partner Trust and Shared Mental Models, 5) Partner Adaptability & Back-Up Behavior, 6) Process Conflict, 7) Strong Task Conflict, 8) Mild Task Conflict, and 9) Interpersonal Conflict. We tested a short-form (30-item SF) and long-form (45-item LF) version. The CFAs determined that both the SF and the LF possess positive psychometric properties of reliability and construct validity. The EMT-TEAMWORK-SF has positive internal consistency properties, with a mean Cronbach's alpha coefficient > = 0.70 across all nine factors (mean = 0.84; minimum = 0.78, maximum = 0.94). The mean Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the EMT-TEAMWORK-LF was 0.87 (minimum = 0.79, maximum = 0.94). There was wide variation in weighted scores across all nine factors and the global score for the SF and LF. Mean scores were lowest for the Team Orientation factor (48.1, standard deviation [SD] 21.5, SF; 49.3, SD 19.8, LF) and highest (more positive) for the Interpersonal Conflict factor (87.7, SD 18.1, for both SF and LF). Conclusions: We developed a reliable and valid survey to evaluate teamwork between EMT partners.

    Journal Title

    Prehospital Emergency Care

    Volume

    16

    Issue/Number

    1

    Publication Date

    1-1-2012

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    98

    Last Page

    108

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000297518500011

    ISSN

    1090-3127

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