Half-Day Training Content
Components you can include in Module 2 for a half-day training include the following:
Teams and Team Structure
- Introduction: 2 minutes
- Defining teams: 2 minutes
- Integrating patients and families into teams: 5 minutes
- Multi-team systems: 5 minutes
- Team structure video discussion: 5 minutes
Leading Teams
- Leadership discussion: 4 minutes
- Introduction: 2 minutes
- Team leaders: 3 minutes
- Defining the plan and assigning tasks: 2 minutes
- Sharing the plan (brief): 3 minutes
- Monitoring and modifying the plan (huddle): 2 minutes
- Reviewing the team’s performance (debrief): 4 minutes
- Facilitating conflict resolution and teamwork: 3 minutes
- Team formation video: 8 minutes
- Tools and strategies summary: 2 minutes
If you are teaching Module 2 as part of a half-day training, you should be able to cover all the areas above in about 50 minutes. You may choose to spend more time on some of these activities and to omit others. Alternatively, you may want to include other parts of the Team Leadership Module materials instead of some of the components noted above. In a half-day course, the focus is likely to be on specific, usable tools, so try to spend as much time on them as possible.
Teaching Goals
As noted in the introductory section, it’s important to continuously reinforce your enthusiasm for TeamSTEPPS and its importance to patients and healthcare workers. You also should continue to foster mutual respect, fun, and transparency through the use of active learning and listening throughout the section.
Specific goals for teaching this section include some related to an understanding of team structure and others focused on team leadership. Objectives for each are identified below.
Teams and Team Structure
- Understand the benefits of teamwork and clear team structure.
- Define a “team.”
- Identify the roles of patients and family caregivers within the care team.
- Describe the components and composition of a multi-team system.
Team Leadership
- Describe how leadership affects team processes and outcomes.
- Identify diverse types of team leaders.
- Describe the activities involved in successfully leading teams.
- Describe the tools for leading teams, including briefs, huddles, and debriefs.
- Apply the tools for leading teams to specific clinical scenarios.
The sequence of topics described below will help achieve these goals, although reinforcing them will be critical for them to be used and sustained.
Introduction and Objectives
Briefly review the learning objectives for the first half of the module (Slide 3) and then introduce the concept of team structure and its relationship to the other three core TeamSTEPPS skills (Slide 4). It’s important to still emphasize that every part of TeamSTEPPS is needed to foster a culture of safety. Encourage the trainees to look for specific concepts and tools they can apply to their own teams following the training.
If time permits, have a participant share a situation they experienced where the team leader did an excellent job of guiding their members through a challenging situation. Use this story to create a positive image of what TeamSTEPPS can help their teams achieve.
Teams and Team Structure
You can use the slides and instructor guidance from the 2-day training section to teach this section. To shorten the section, omit the team exercise on Slide 6. Use a hypothetical patient (e.g., a long-term care resident who recently had hip replacement surgery) and ask participants to identify healthcare workers supporting them and whether they are all on one team or many teams. This exercise may provide clarity about the meaning of teams and their relationships.
Take time to discuss Slides 7-9, because these slides recast the patient as an active member of the team.
Consider consolidating the content of Slides 10-15 and just briefly reviewing the different types of teams in a hospital-based multi-team system using Slide 10. Particularly if participants work outside acute care, it’s important to acknowledge the complexity and challenges of the MTS for patients receiving care in different settings and potentially from different healthcare systems.
If you have time, you can still use the team structure video (Slide 16), followed by a short discussion of the questions on Slide 17. The summary exercise on Slide 18 can be dropped.
Team Leadership
You may choose to save time by converting the exercise on Slide 20 into a short class discussion in which participants identify characteristics of effective and ineffective leaders.
After a review of the objectives (Slide 21), remind participants of how team leadership interconnects with the other three TeamSTEPPS skills (communication, situation monitoring, and mutual support) and call attention to one or two of the leadership bullet points on Slide 22. Briefly note the two types of team leaders on Slide 23 and point out that most training participants probably function as situational leaders at times.
Rather than reviewing each of the bullet points on Slide 24, ask participants which of the listed characteristics they wish more leaders had and why. That will encourage reflection about the characteristics and the reasons each is important.
While material related to slides 25 and 27 can still be covered, dropping or shortening the case study on Slide 26 may free time for other discussion relevant to your class. Content related to the tools should be covered thoroughly (Slides 28-33). The brief exercise on Slide 30 is optional. To save time, omit the debrief video on Slide 33 and consolidate the discussion of it into the combined video on leadership skills on Slide 36.
Conflict is a key cause of stress and burnout, so the discussion of it on Slide 34 is important to include. Acknowledge that conflict is inevitable and that teams that manage it well will have more satisfied and more effective team members. Note the importance of having team leaders model positive behaviors (Slide 35). If time permits, watch the capstone video on leadership (Slide 36) and discuss the set of tools participants have learned in the Team Leadership Module.
Module Summary
Slide 37 can be used to convey how team leadership and leadership tools can help overcome important barriers and achieve the positive outcomes TeamSTEPPS was created for. If time permits, ask participants which of the tools they think will most improve the teams they belong to and why.
