RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 How familiar are clinician teammates in the emergency department?
JF Emergency Medicine Journal
JO Emerg Med J
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and the British Association for Accident & Emergency Medicine
SP 258
OP 262
DO 10.1136/emermed-2013-203199
VO 32
IS 4
A1 P Daniel Patterson
A1 Anthony J Pfeiffer
A1 Judith R Lave
A1 Matthew D Weaver
A1 Kaleab Abebe
A1 David Krackhardt
A1 Robert M Arnold
A1 Donald M Yealy
YR 2015
UL http://emj.bmj.com/content/32/4/258.abstract
AB Objectives Lack of familiarity between teammates is linked to worsened safety in high risk settings. The emergency department (ED) is a high risk healthcare setting where unfamiliar teams are created by diversity in clinician shift schedules and flexibility in clinician movement across the department. We sought to characterise familiarity between clinician teammates in one urban teaching hospital ED over a 22 week study period. Methods We used a retrospective study design of shift scheduling data to calculate the mean weekly hours of familiarity between teammates at the dyadic level, and the proportion of clinicians with a minimum of 2, 5, 10 and 20 h of familiarity at any given hour during the study period. Results Mean weekly hours of familiarity between ED clinician dyads was 2 h (SD 1.5). At any given hour over the study period, the proportions of clinicians with a minimum of 2, 5, 10 and 20 h of familiarity were 80%, 51%, 27% and 0.8%, respectively. Conclusions In our study, few clinicians could be described as having a high level of familiarity with teammates. The limited familiarity between ED clinicians identified in this study may be a natural feature of ED care delivery in academic settings. We provide a template for measurement of ED team familiarity.