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Coaches are vital for effective collaboration, but cost and resource constraints often limit their availability during real-world tasks. This limitation poses serious challenges in life-critical domains that rely on effective teamwork, such as healthcare and disaster response. To address this gap, we propose and realize an innovative application of AI: task-time team coaching. Specifically, we introduce Socratic, a novel AI system that complements human coaches by providing real-time guidance during task execution. Socratic monitors team behavior, detects misalignments in team members' shared understanding, and delivers automated interventions to improve team performance. We validated Socratic through two human subject experiments involving dyadic collaboration. The results demonstrate that the system significantly enhances team performance with minimal interventions. Participants also perceived Socratic as helpful and trustworthy, supporting its potential for adoption. Our findings also suggest promising directions both for AI research and its practical applications to enhance human teamwork. 

ImportanceAssessing nontechnical skills in operating rooms (ORs) is crucial for enhancing surgical performance and patient safety. However, automated and real-time evaluation of these skills remains challenging. ObjectiveTo explore the feasibility of using motion features extracted from surgical video recordings to automatically assess nontechnical skills during cardiac surgical procedures. Design, Setting, and ParticipantsThis cross-sectional study used video recordings of cardiac surgical procedures at a tertiary academic US hospital collected from January 2021 through May 2022. The OpenPose library was used to analyze videos to extract body pose estimations of team members and compute various team motion features. The Non-Technical Skills for Surgeons (NOTSS) assessment tool was employed for rating the OR team’s nontechnical skills by 3 expert raters. Main Outcomes and MeasuresNOTSS overall score, with motion features extracted from surgical videos as measures. ResultsA total of 30 complete cardiac surgery procedures were included: 26 (86.6%) were on-pump coronary artery bypass graft procedures and 4 (13.4%) were aortic valve replacement or repair procedures. All patients were male, and the mean (SD) age was 72 (6.3) years. All surgical teams were composed of 4 key roles (attending surgeon, attending anesthesiologist, primary perfusionist, and scrub nurse) with additional supporting roles. NOTSS scores correlated significantly with trajectory (r = 0.51,P = .005), acceleration (r = 0.48,P = .008), and entropy (r = −0.52,P = .004) of team displacement. Multiple linear regression, adjusted for patient factors, showed average team trajectory (adjustedR² = 0.335; coefficient, 10.51 [95% CI, 8.81-12.21];P = .004) and team displacement entropy (adjustedR² = 0.304; coefficient, −12.64 [95% CI, −20.54 to −4.74];P = .003) were associated with NOTSS scores. Conclusions and RelevanceThis study suggests a significant link between OR team movements and nontechnical skills ratings by NOTSS during cardiac surgical procedures, suggesting automated surgical video analysis could enhance nontechnical skills assessment. Further investigation across different hospitals and specialties is necessary to validate these findings. 

Background Certain leadership behaviours are particularly helpful for healthcare teams remain effective through crisis situations, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. This paper summarizes evidence-based insights based on their importance and prevalence in the crisis leadership literature to provide recommendations that apply to medical team leaders broadly construed. We recommend that leaders adopt these behaviours in conditions of intense difficulty, uncertainty, as well as physical and psychological peril. Results We draw from research on workplace resilience, as well as leadership literature (ie, team leadership, transformational leadership, shared leadership, and crisis leadership) to provide six key insights along with evidence and practical guidance for healthcare leaders to help their teams in the midst of a crisis: (1) remain optimistic when communicating a vision, (2) adapt to the changing situation by deferring to team members’ expertise, (3) support organizational resilience by providing relational resources, (4) be present to signal commitment, (5) be empathetic to help prevent burnout, and (6) be transparent in order to remain trustworthy. 

Anders Ericsson’s seminal research on expert performance spurred a number of streams of research across psychological disciplines. Though his work was primarily focused on expert individual performance, there has been increasing interest over the past several decades on the factors underlying expert teamwork. This paper advances eight principles of expert team performance based on decades of team science research: shared mental models, learning and adaptation, role clarity, shared vision, dynamic leadership, psychological safety, cooperation and coordination, and resilience. In addition, we review a number of team development interventions aimed at building team expertise including team training, simulation, coaching, and debriefing. Accordingly, this paper is divided into three sections addressing (1) how expert teams perform, (2) interventions to develop expert team performance, and (3) a reflection on the role Anders Ericsson’s work has played in team science, including a personal reflection from Eduardo Salas on deliberate and guided practice. 

Abstract As the need to tackle complex clinical and societal problems rises, researchers are increasingly taking on a translational approach. This approach, which seeks to integrate theories, methodologies, and frameworks from various disciplines across a team of researchers, places emphasis on translation of findings in order to offer practical solutions to real-world problems. While translational research leads to a number of positive outcomes, there are also a multitude of barriers to conducting effective team science, such as effective coordination and communication across the organizational, disciplinary, and even geographic boundaries of science teams. Given these barriers to success, there is a significant need to establish team interventions that increase science team effectiveness as translational research becomes the new face of science. This review is intended to provide translational scientists with an understanding of barriers to effective team science and equip them with the necessary tools to overcome such barriers. We provide an overview of translational science teams, discuss barriers to science team effectiveness, demonstrate the lacking state of current interventions, and present recommendations for improving interventions in science teams by applying best practices from the teams and groups literature across the four phases of transdisciplinary research.