| In an effort to address the quality and safety of patient care, numerous scholars have investigated ways in which teamwork initiatives can help foster the development of teamwork and leadership skills, which tend to have a positive impact on patient care. In fact, as part of the Institute of Medicine's recommendations for reducing medical errors, the first tier of their approach is to place a strong focus on leadership (at all levels of patient care) and tools that may be used to strengthen the safety knowledge base (Kohn, Corrigan, & Donaldson, 2000). Based on existing literature, a crucial component of leader development is one's attitudes towards leadership, including leader identity, leader self-efficacy, and motivation to lead, and these attitudes may be considerably strengthened through experiential learning. In the present study, I investigated whether these attitudes toward leadership were strengthened among Physical Therapy students who participate as a designated or assistant leader in the context of simulation-based interprofessional education (IPE). These questions were examined through the Input-Process-Output model framework and the theoretical lenses of self-perception theory and sensemaking theory in the context of simulation-based IPE. In short, I found that a variety of simulation and debrief variables predicted post-simulation leadership attitudes for designated and/or assistant leaders, with degree of participation appearing to have the most influence. |
