Teamness, burnout, job satisfaction and decision-making in the VA Centers of Excellence in Primary Care Education

Abstract

Abstract Background/purpose To evaluate teamness perceptions of employees and trainees and associations between teamness and employee perceptions of burnout, satisfaction, and decision-making in the context of a clinical setting with interprofessional trainees. Methods Seven Veterans Health Administration (VA)-funded Centers of Excellence in Primary Care Education (CoEPCE) developed interprofessional ambulatory learning environments. Two hundred forty-eight trainees and 260 employees completed the Assessment for Collaborative Environments (ACE-15) scale, a measure of teamness; VA employees also answered survey questions on burnout, job satisfaction, and decision-making. Means, standard deviations, t-tests, analysis of variance (ANOVA) using Levene's test for homogeneity and Pearson's product-moment correlations were performed. Data were collected in each of two years. Results For employees, higher teamness was correlated with lower burnout, higher satisfaction, and higher decision-making in both years. In Year 1, employee mean ACE-15 score was 46.86 (SD 7.44) and trainee mean was 50.22 (SD 5.81). In year 2, the employee mean was 47.08 (SD 6.16) and trainee mean was 50.47 (SD 6.16) (p Conclusions We found that teamness was significantly higher in trainees than employees in both years, and that the ACE-15 was effective in discriminating between these groups. The ACE-15 is helpful in measuring teamness in a primary care education reform context, and correlates with employee improvements in burnout, satisfaction, and decision-making. This study suggests that, in a context of interprofessional learning, measuring teamness among all care team members can enhance understanding of what influences performance and satisfaction.