Association between measured teamwork and medical errors: an observational study of prehospital care in the USA

Herzberg S, Hansen M , Schoonover A, Skarica B, McNulty J, Harrod T, Snowden JM, Lambert W, Guise JM. Association between measured teamwork and medical errors: an observational study of prehospital care in the USA. BMJ Open. 2019;9(10).

Many patient safety strategies focus on effective teamwork among healthcare professionals. This study used a validated instrument, the Clinical Teamwork Scale (CTS), to measure overall teamwork in 44 teams of emergency medical services (EMS) professionals as they responded to 176 simulations of pediatric emergencies. Results indicated that fewer errors were made by teams with higher (better) CTS scores.

PubMed citation

Available at