LAUSR

INTRODUCTION Individual assessments disregard team contributions, while team assessments disregard an individual's contributions. Interdependence has been put forth as a conceptual bridge between our educational traditions of assessing individual performance and our imminent challenge of assessing team-based performance without losing sight of the individual. The purpose of this study was to develop a more refined conceptualization of interdependence to inform the creation of measures that can assess the interdependence of residents within healthcare teams. METHODS Following a constructivist grounded theory approach, we conducted 49 semi-structured interviews with various members of healthcare teams (e.g., physicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, patients) across two different clinical specialties - Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics - at two separate sites. Data collection and analysis occurred iteratively. Constant comparative inductive analysis was used and coding consisted of three stages: initial, focused, and theoretical. RESULTS We asked participants to reflect upon interdependence and describe how it exists in their clinical setting. All participants acknowledged the existence of interdependence, but they did not view it as part of a linear spectrum where interdependence becomes independence. Our analysis refined the conceptualization of interdependence to include two types: supportive and collaborative. Supportive interdependence occurs within healthcare teams when one member demonstrates insufficient expertise to perform within their scope of practice. Collaborative interdependence, on the other hand, was not triggered by lack of experience/expertise within an individual's scope of practice, but rather recognition that patient care requires contributions from other team members. CONCLUSION In order to assess a team's collective performance without losing sight of the individual, we need to capture interdependent performances and characterize the nature of such interdependence. Moving away from a linear trajectory where independence is seen as the end goal can also help support efforts to measure an individual's competence as an interdependent member of a healthcare team.