Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
4.2.2 Team and Shared Situation awareness in biosurveillance
Te am SA
can be defined as “the degree to which every team member pos-
sesses the SA required for his or her responsibilities” (Endsley 1995). By this
definition, each team member needs to have a high level of SA on those fac-
tors that are relevant for his or her job. Thus, the success or failure of a team
depends on the success or failure of each of its team members. In contrast,
shared SA
can be defined as “the degree to which team members possess the
same SA on shared SA requirements” (Endsley and Jones 2001). As implied
by this definition, certain SA information requirements may be relevant to
multiple team members. A major part of teamwork involves the area where
these requirements overlap. Therefore, to ensure successful performance, it
is important that team members share a common understanding of what
is happening on these shared SA elements. However, this does not imply
that all information needs to be shared, which would create more workload
for the health professionals as they would be forced to sort through a great
deal of noise to find the information they need. Instead, what matters most
is that team members are able to access and similarly interpret important
information on the shared SA requirements that are relevant across their dif-
ferent positions and specializations. For example, when a disease outbreak
occurs in multiple countries, physicians within each country need to know
the disease symptoms, possible spreading mechanisms, and treatments that
have been helpful; this necessitates shared SA across the different doctors
regarding the disease. In contrast, government health officials have to know
the number of cases within each country and possible links between these
cases to determine possible trends; this requires team SA among different
government personnel to gather the needed information.
In addition, the detection and control of disease outbreaks often require
the creation of ad hoc teams interacting across space and time to coordi-
nate their efforts to achieve a common goal. These teams are composed of
individuals with a broad range of specializations within distinct domains
(e.g., epidemiologists, physicians, nurses, veterinarians, computer scientists,
statisticians, water quality specialists, biologists, and microbiologists) and
are drawn from different local, state, and federal health agencies as well as
international organizations (Wagner, Moore, and Aryel 2006). The dynamic,
fluid, and multidisciplinary nature of these ad-hoc teams may influence
their shared SA. For example, ad-hoc teams may have unique shared SA
requirements, which differ from those of intact groups that are accustomed
to working together, such as specific information regarding their team mem-
bers' knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to guide assignment of roles
and responsibilities (Strater et al. 2009).
Because biosurveillance involves many people from different disciplines
and agencies working together to monitor and respond to potential threats to
public health, both nationally and internationally, systems need to go beyond
keeping one human in the loop, but, more important, support collaboration
