TeamSTEPPS^®

Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS) is a teamwork system designed to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of health care. The goal of TeamSTEPPS is to produce highly effective medical teams that optimize the use of information, people, and resources to achieve the best clinical outcomes for our patients. This system can be implemented in various healthcare settings and is designed to improve communication and other crucial teamwork skills among health care professionals.

TeamSTEPPS was developed by the Department of Defense (DoD) Patient Safety Program (PSP), in collaboration with the Department of Health & Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and is scientifically rooted in over 20 years of research and lessons learned from the application of teamwork principles identified in Crew Resource Management (CRM) and within High Reliability Organizations (HROs).

Click below to view a brief video on TeamSTEPPS.

For health care organizations that are interested in implementing TeamSTEPPS, numerous training curricula and ready-to-use materials are available.

Shown below is a process flow chart that depicts the various phases of planning, training, implementing and sustaining the principles and methods of TeamSTEPPS. Move your cursor over each clickable section (yellow box) of this chart to instantly access multiple resources that can be used to implement TeamSTEPPS at your health care organization.