Anything I missed out↑: Pre-briefing in ad hoc trauma emergency teams

Team briefings constitute a core interactional event in healthcare contexts, as they are directly linked to higher clinical performance and enhanced patient safety. In emergency settings, there is strong evidence suggesting that successful briefings reduce the time to critical team tasks, leading to reduced mortality. Despite their role, however, they are still not systematised in organisational practice, and when they are conducted, their content and structure significantly vary (inter)nationally.

In this article, we draw on a recently completed project to discuss patterns associated with (in)effective pre-briefings in our data and we proposal an overarching framework for pre-briefings in the context of trauma emergencies. Through the use of interactional analysis, an established theoretical and methodological approach, we unpack the form and function of pre-briefings, showing the stages and features that are systematically emergent in our data. Particular attention is paid to the team leader, who holds a central role in bringing the team together during the pre-briefing stage and throughout the episode. We close the paper with the implications of our findings and suggestions for further research.