Flash Teams with Ben Watts

Pre-Hospital Care Podcast

In this conversation we will examine the concept of flash teams with Ben Watts. We will focus on why they can pose such a challenge in highly stressful situations. We examine the concepts and issues of ego, lack of team ethos, lack of shared understanding/clear plan, poor communications, name use, active listening issues, poor followship, anchoring and much more. We also examine when things are working well and some of the core fundamental components of this including collaboration, use of checklists, feedback mechanisms, closed loop communication, affirmation, shared mental models and overt followship and leadership. We also look at one of the key fundamental tenets of flash teams, that of consistently calm cadence of communication.

To do this I have Ben Watts with me, Ben is no stranger to the podcast and has spoken with me on a number of episodes, most recently around the bleeding patient. Ben is a critical care retrieval practitioner working with the Emergency Medical Retrieval Service (EMRS) in Scotland and also works as a World Extreme Medicine (WEM) faculty member. In the conversation we examine:

· The concept of flash teams

· When it goes right – what this looks like from a flow of communication

· When it goes wrong and how can we correct it

· The importance of effective communication

· Feedback mechanisms to course correct for future performance

· Error detection – Ben’s approach to error trapping

· Distraction and environmental factors - signal versus noise

· Decision making paralysis and the concept of ‘overwhelm’.

· Correcting poor teams when they are going wrong.

· Training and education around flash teams

My thanks to Ben for an engaging and interesting conversation