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Aims: The aim of this study was to validate a psychometric tool, the team survey, in a health care setting with a range of teams from a Large National Health Service (NHS) Trust.

Nontechnical skills relating to team functioning are vital to the effective delivery of patient care and safety. In this study, we develop a reliable behavioral marker tool for assessing nontechnical skills that are critical to the success of ward-based multidisciplinary healthcare teams. The Team Functioning Assessment Tool (TFAT) was developed and refined using a literature review, focus groups, card-sorting exercise, field observations, and final questionnaire evaluation and refinement process.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the organizational predictors of higher scores on team climate measures as an indicator of the functioning of a family health team (FHT).

DESIGN: Cross-sectional study using a mailed survey.

SETTING: Family health teams in Ontario.

PARTICIPANTS: Twenty-one of 144 consecutively approached FHTs; 628 team members were surveyed.

A short 14-item version of the Team Climate Inventory (TCI; Anderson & West, 1994) was developed and tested by using two Finnish samples of social and health care personnel (N = 1494 and N = 771). The results of LISREL and other analyses provided evidence of the four-factor structure of the short form, as well as of the internal homogeneity, reliability and normality of its scales across the two samples. Compared to the original TCI, an acceptable item coverage and predictive validity of the shortened version was demonstrated.

This paper reports the development and psychometric validation of a multi-dimensional measure of facet-specific climate for innovation within groups at work: the Team Climate Inventory (TCI). Brief reviews of the organizational climate and work group innovation literatures are presented initially, and the need for measures of facet-specific climate at the level of the proximal work group asserted.

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Interprofessional education (IPE) in clinical practice is believed to improve outcomes in health care delivery. Integrating teaching and learning objectives through cross discipline student interaction in basic sciences has the potential to initiate interprofessional collaboration at the early stages of health care education.

BACKGROUND: The need for palliative and end-of-life care (PEOLC) education in prelicensure education has been identified. PEOLC requires effective collaborative teamwork. The competencies required for effective collaborative teamwork are only now emerging and methods to evaluate them must be developed.

This research was part of a Health Canada funded initiative developed to provide evidence about the effectiveness of interprofessional education (IPE) interventions to promote collaborative patient-centred care. Health professional students' ratings of health professions and the effect of IPE on those ratings were examined. Participants were divided into three groups (N=51); control, education, and practice site immersion.

The quality of teamwork among health care professionals is known to affect patient outcomes. In the OR, surgeons report more favorable perceptions of communication during procedures and of teamwork effectiveness than do nurses. We undertook a quality improvement project in the Veterans Health Administration to confirm reported teamwork differences between perioperative nurses and surgeons and to examine the implications of these differences for improving practice patterns in the OR.