Work-based assessment of teamwork: an interprofessional approach

This project addresses the nationally recognized need to develop and deliver a robust package of work-based assessment (WBA) tools for health professional students in diverse clinical settings as a means of testing their teamwork competencies and interprofessional collaboration in the workplace. Teamwork competencies are included as both graduate attributes in general and in healthcare curricula in particular but are rarely assessed. The authors provide an assessment framework that not only assesses students individually as team members but also considers a team as a single entity with a view to enhancing team performance. This partnership of one Canadian and four Australian universities reviews and evaluates existing WBA tools for teamwork across the health professions and develops a framework and instruments for formative assessment - including the iTOFT (individual teamwork observation and feedback tool) - that are valid, reliable, feasible and suitable for the provision of timely and constructive feedback to students. The authors will pilot the instruments at multiple sites and evaluate their educational impact over the project's three years. Show less