Podcast 010: Team Reflexivity

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During this podcast, Walter interviews Jan Schmutz, PhD, a team psychologist and researcher from ETH Zurich in Switzerland. They discuss their recent paper in Academic Medicine 1 , in which they present a novel conceptual framework for team reflexivity in healthcare, and how it can impact both patient care and learning.

Team reflexivity refers to how teams reflect together about goals, processes, and strategies to improve current and future performance. While team reflection after an event–i.e. debriefing–will be well-known to listeners, Jan and Walter discuss opportunities for team reflexivity both BEFORE and DURING patient care events, especially those that are highly dynamic and evolve rapidly.  Examples would be a team huddle before a major trauma patient arrives in the ED or performing a quick recap and/or evaluation of ongoing patient care to make sure the team is on the same page and not missing anything important. Jan and Walter highlight how opportunities for team reflexivity can form the basis of ‘what to debrief’ to help teams improve in subsequent events.

                         

References

1.
Schmutz J, Eppich W. Promoting Learning and Patient Care Through Shared Reflection: A Conceptual Framework for Team Reflexivity in Health Care. Acad Med. April 2017. [PubMed]
Jan Schmutz

Jan Schmutz

Jan Schmutz is a researcher and lecturer at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) and holds a PhD in Work and Organizational Psychology. His research seeks to unfold the full potential of teams in extreme environments like emergency care settings, military or Antarctica.
Jan Schmutz

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Walter Eppich

Walter Eppich

Director, Faculty Development at the Department of Medical Education, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Walter Eppich practices pediatric emergency medicine at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. He teaches about simulation, faculty development, and debriefing around the world. A candidate for a PhD in Medical Education at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, Walter studies the role of talk as a medium of learning for individuals and teams. He is a co-founder of Debrief2Learn.
Walter Eppich
Walter Eppich

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