Adaptation of Team Structure of Trauma Resuscitation Teams

Abstract

We analyzed the debriefing sessions of real-life trauma resuscitation teams during the most intensive period of resuscitation: the first 30 minutes of patient admission to a trauma center. The debriefing sessions were from participants reviewing their performance in videotaped trauma resuscitation. Nineteen videotaped cases were reviewed in 37 debriefing sessions. Adaptation of team structure was noticed in response to task urgency and criticality, even though there was a preference for teams to maintain a hierarchical structure. We propose a set of archetypes of team structures based on the debriefing session and discuss how the archetypes could be used as a way to capture how teams adapt their structures.