IT’S TIME TO MANDATE TEAM TRAINING IN U.S. HOSPITALS

Abstract

It has remained the goal of the U.S. healthcare industry and patient safety experts to achieve “high reliability” in healthcare, reducing patient harm or death from healthcare error to zero.  Among safety strategies used by other High Reliability Organizations (HRO), team training has been recognized by safety leaders in healthcare as contributing to some of the most dramatic improvements in an industry that has achieved HRO status, the airline industry.  Team training, which is not mandated for healthcare, is a key component of Crew Resource Management (CRM) training used by the airline industry.  While CRM is mandated for members of the aircraft crew and other airline team members in aviation, no comparable type of training is required for professionals working in the healthcare industry.  If team training became required for all hospital staff and physicians in U.S. hospitals, it would have the potential to help healthcare organizations to realistically strive to achieve high reliability status, with a goal of zero patient harm events.  Since the time of the IOM report, patient safety leaders have urged the implementation of team training as a key strategy to significantly reduce patient harm in healthcare.  In order to make care safer for patients in U.S. hospitals, the federal government should mandate team training for all physicians and hospital staff through federal legislation with regulatory oversight by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) through the Conditions of Participation (CoPs).

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