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Components you can include in Module 4 for a half-day training include:

• Introduction and Objectives: 3 minutes
• Task Assistance: 5 minutes
• Formative Feedback: 6 minutes
• Feedback Exercise: 4 minutes
• Advocacy and Assertion Tools: 12 minutes
• Conflict in Teams: 6 minutes
• DESC: 3 minutes
• Summary: 2 minutes

If you are teaching Module 4 as part of a half-day training, you should be able to cover all the areas above in about 40 minutes.

You may choose to spend more time on some of these activities and to omit others. Alternatively, you may want to include other parts of the Mutual Support Module materials instead of some of the components noted above. But in a half-day course, the focus is likely to be on specific, usable tools, so try to spend as much time on them as possible.

Teaching Goals

As noted in the introductory section, it's important to continuously reinforce your enthusiasm for TeamSTEPPS and its importance to patients and healthcare workers. You also should continue to foster mutual respect, fun, and transparency by using active learning and listening throughout the section. Specific goals for teaching this section are identified below.

• Describe how mutual support affects team processes and outcomes.
• Discuss specific strategies to foster mutual support (e.g., task assistance, feedback).
• Identify specific tools to facilitate mutual support. 
• Describe conflict resolution strategies.

The sequence of topics described below will help achieve these four goals, although reinforcing them will be critical for them to be used and sustained.

Introduction and Objectives

Briefly review the learning objectives for the module (Slide 2) and then introduce the concept of mutual support and its relationship to the other three core TeamSTEPPS skills (Slides 3–4). It's important to still emphasize that every part of TeamSTEPPS needs to foster a culture of safety, because without a safety culture, TeamSTEPPS tools will have much less value.

Encourage the trainees to look for specific concepts and tools they can apply to their own teams after the training. If you have time, have a participant share a situation they experienced where the team did a great job of providing mutual support to each other. Use this story to create a positive image of what TeamSTEPPS can help their teams achieve.

Mutual Support Tools

After providing this introduction to mutual support, we recommend you use the same approach to teaching each tool as is described above for a two-day training (using Slides 6–22, though to save time you may want to drop the feedback video on Slide 11). If you lack time to cover all the tools, consider leaving one of them out so you can help your class fully understand the importance and use of each tool you do teach.

Unit Summary

You can still use Slide 22 to help your class retain the big picture for how mutual support and its tools relate to the other TeamSTEPPS skills and to the goal of high-performing, trusting, and patient-centered teams. If time permits, ask participants which of the tools they think will most improve the teams they belong to and why.