ABSTRACT
Effective team working can promote better patient health outcomes. One area where this is particularly important is in Obstetrics where the effectiveness of the team can literally make a difference between life and death. Obstetric emergency training has significantly increased the knowledge of obstetric emergencies. Sundstrom and colleagues chose not to use the input-process-output format for displaying the factors believed to be most crucial to work team performance because they felt such a format implies that performance is an end state rather than a continual process. The gold standard evaluation of any obstetric training programme would be to demonstrate an improvement in maternal or neonatal outcome following the instigation of training. The team enjoyed sufficient autonomy and invested much time and effort in the development phase. Members are aware that organisational factors can significantly affect performance. Members encountered several incidents that clashed with their performance, such as staff shortages and unexpected changes of course venue.
