ABSTRACT

Cross-professional healthcare teams generate diverse perspectives and expectations that can affect individuals’ ability to work together. Shared mental models can orchestrate a common expectation, allowing for more efficient team processes to improve team performance. To measure ‘sharedness’, mental models must be elicited, but the appropriateness of a selected technique will depend on the characteristics of the domain and the type of knowledge to be measured. This chapter examines two methods of mental model capture in the Operating Room (OR) and the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). In depth interviews with OR experts and observed team members captured team mental models (TMM) specific to OR tasks and associated teamwork expectations. Six recurring themes of potential TMM incongruence emerged. In the ICU, interviews served to construct a task model of emergency ICU processes that underwent a card sorting task, validated by subject matter experts. Mental model similarity was calculated using a similarity index between each pair of participants. Advantages and lessons learned from both methods are discussed.