Facilitating teamwork in emergency management: The team process checklist

Abstract

Emergency management (EM) teams typically operate in complex dynamic environments where they need to synthesize incomplete, contradictory or overwhelming amounts of information into intelligence and produce outputs in a short time-scale. Independent inquiries following large-scale emergencies highlight the central role that team processes such as communication, coordination, and cooperation play in enabling the effective performance of teams. This article describes the development and evaluation of the Team Process Checklist (TPC). The TPC is a 17-item checklist that is designed to help observers and/or team members better understand and manage EM teams both in real time and after the event (in debriefs and after action reviews). Items for the TPC were identified in the literature on communication, coordination and cooperation and then developed through five different regional coordination center (RCC) exercises by observers who used the TPC to evaluate the teamwork of the RCC. Following the development phase four evaluation studies were conducted with EM personnel. In these studies the TPC was rated as having very good usefulness, clarity, and comprehensiveness. The TPC therefore shows considerable promise as a simple, straight-forward way to help people in EM better understand and manage their teams in real time and after the event.