Does classroom-based crew resource management training have an effect on attitudes between doctors and nurses?

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate participant reactions and attitudes to crew resource management teamwork classroom-based training by comparing Likert responses before and after the intervention and exploring potential differences in attitudes across the different healthcare professionals.

METHODS: Between 26 January and 27 March, 2015, a randomly selected sample of 240 frontline healthcare professionals offering direct patient care were recruited to undergo a 4-hour crew resource management classroom-based training programme. Participants were asked to complete a 22-item human factors attitude survey before and after training and a 10-item end-of-programme evaluation. Paired samples t-test was used to assess differences between the participants' pretest and posttest scores on each item.

RESULTS: A total of 167 (70%) from 17 different specialties underwent the training and 164 (68.3%) completed (139 nurses, 25 doctors) the survey. The nurses were of similar age to the doctors (38.2 vs 36.9, p=0.83) and were more likely to be women (75.6% vs 24.6%, p <0.001). Human factors attitude survey findings indicated that nurses valued the experience highly compared to doctors. The responses among the nurses revealed significant attitude shifts (p <0.05) in 20 of the 22 items whereas this was the case only for 9 items among the doctors.

CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the crew resource management classroom-based training programme appeared to have a positive effect on frontline healthcare professionals' attitudes. The implementation of such programme is feasible and acceptable, especially for nurses, in a public hospital setting in Hong Kong.