ABSTRACT
The role of effective teamwork in accomplishing complex tasks is accepted in many domains. Similarly, there is good evidence that the outcome in trauma care depends on effective trauma team performance. Teamwork during trauma care can be deficient in a number of ways (Table 1), and multiple deficiencies may interact to impair team success and patient outcomes. This chapter focuses on understanding, assessing, and improving trauma team performance. Resuscitation of trauma patients is a specialized domain in which critically ill patients are treated in a dedicated facility. The need to train and evaluate the performance of trauma teams has emerged as an important topic over the past decade (1,2). Institutions must establish and continuously validate their team-based trauma resuscitation procedures to assure high quality care. This iterative evaluation must include the review of secondary management, careful delineation of team structure, comprehensive team training, effective support structures, and continuous quality improvement. This chapter reviews the state-of-the-art methodology useful for the trauma team’s training, evaluation, and improvement. Emphasis is placed upon essential features and newer techniques, including computer simulation and video-assisted analysis and debriefing.
