Promoting Teamwork in Healthcare
Description:... Providing healthcare is a team endeavor. Teams play an important role along the full chain of patient care, ranging from ad-hoc emergency and anesthesia teams delivering immediate care to tumor boards conferring on long-term cancer treatment. Thereby, quality of patient care hinges on the successful intra- and interprofessional collaboration among healthcare professionals, and sensitive partnering with patients and their families. In particular, communication and coordination in healthcare teams have been found essential for team performance and patient safety. Yet, effective teamwork is challenging, especially in large hospitals where turnover rates are high, and for interdisciplinary and interprofessional ad-hoc teams lacking the experience of constantly working together as a team (e.g., ICU, emergency teams, obstetrics, or anesthesia). Moreover, healthcare teams deal with complex tasks, have to make risky and fast decisions under uncertainty, and to adapt quickly to changing conditions. Fostering research on how to promote effective teamwork in healthcare may thus make an important contribution to a better quality of patient care.
Show description