Improving Healthcare Team Performance

Practical, proven techniques for improving team performance in the health care world Teams and collaboration have become an expectation in most healthcare facilities and environments. It is accepted that high performance, patient focused teams are critical to quality patient care. However, there is often a wide gap between traditional practices and the new behaviours and practices required for teamwork and collaboration. Improving Health Care Team Performance goes beyond theory to provide the knowledge, tools, and techniques required to develop a single team, or to develop an organization wide team based culture, from which exceptional patient care emerges. Most uniquely it emphasizes that effective teamwork goes far beyond team dynamics and provides detailed description of additional requirements, such as shared learning and change compatibility, and how to fulfill them. A practical handbook for healthcare leaders striving to ensure a superior patient experience and high quality of care, Improving Healthcare Team Performance not only provides specifics on how to develop high functioning teams, whether multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, or departmental but also offers those dealing with the common healthcare leadership challenges of low morale, poor communication, interpersonal conflict, and lack of knowledge sharing the tools to take immediate action to improve performance. Providing a proven approach to addressing and preventing everyday issues impacting patient care, Improving Health Care Team Performance contains everything needed to identify areas of greatest need within a team or department, take targeted action to address key gaps, and measure progress towards positive change. Presents a clear depiction of what constitutes collaboration and a high-performing patient focused team. This includes the skills and practices required to improve team performance and ultimately the quality of patient care, how to develop new attitudes and behaviours within the team, as well as the leadership requirements for success in a patient focused, team based culture. Provides a set of development tools accessible online to help the reader quickly and easily apply the knowledge gleaned. Offers targeted solutions including tips/recommendations, a step-by-step approach for affecting necessary change at every level of the organization, and skills and team development activities. Designed for leaders working in any healthcare environment, Improving Health Care Team Performance is a practical approach to improving team performance and the quality of patient care.

Communications research in aviation is widely regarded by many in the healthcare community as the 'gold standard' that should be emulated. Yet healthcare and aviation differ in many ways, as do the vital communications shared among members of clinical teams. Aviation team communication should, then, be understood in terms of what lessons will benefit those who work in healthcare. This book reports on recent field research to address what is known, and what needs to be learned, about team communication among operators.

Building on the revolutionary Institute of Medicine reports To Err is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm, Keeping Patients Safe lays out guidelines for improving patient safety by changing nurses' working conditions and demands. Licensed nurses and unlicensed nursing assistants are critical participants in our national effort to protect patients from health care errors. The nature of the activities nurses typically perform â€" monitoring patients, educating home caretakers, performing treatments, and rescuing patients who are in crisis â€" provides an indispensable resource in detecting and remedying error-producing defects in the U.S. health care system. During the past two decades, substantial changes have been made in the organization and delivery of health care â€" and consequently in the job description and work environment of nurses. As patients are increasingly cared for as outpatients, nurses in hospitals and nursing homes deal with greater severity of illness. Problems in management practices, employee deployment, work and workspace design, and the basic safety culture of health care organizations place patients at further risk. This newest edition in the groundbreaking Institute of Medicine Quality Chasm series discusses the key aspects of the work environment for nurses and reviews the potential improvements in working conditions that are likely to have an impact on patient safety.

The Institute of Medicine study Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001) recommended that an interdisciplinary summit be held to further reform of health professions education in order to enhance quality and patient safety. Health Professions Education: A Bridge to Quality is the follow up to that summit, held in June 2002, where 150 participants across disciplines and occupations developed ideas about how to integrate a core set of competencies into health professions education. These core competencies include patient-centered care, interdisciplinary teams, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, and informatics. This book recommends a mix of approaches to health education improvement, including those related to oversight processes, the training environment, research, public reporting, and leadership. Educators, administrators, and health professionals can use this book to help achieve an approach to education that better prepares clinicians to meet both the needs of patients and the requirements of a changing health care system.

v. 1. Research findings -- v. 2. Concepts and methodology -- v. 3. Implementation issues -- v. 4. Programs, tools and products.

One of the most important advances in the delivery of healthcare has been recognition of the need for developing highly functioning multi-disciplinary teams. Such teams, when structured in a cohesive fashion, can function more effectively and efficiently than the sum of their parts. The benefits of teamwork extend from the delivery of care to a single patient to the overall structure and function of entire care delivery systems. Recognizing the value of collaborative approaches for improving all aspects of healthcare delivery and having champions, leaders, structure, function, goals, and accountability are paramount to success, regardless of how defined. Another important pillar of teamwork is excellent communication with clearly defined information flows and cross-verification mechanisms. This book outlines how to work together for shared goals in a complex, diverse, and constantly evolving health care system.

This new edition of this bestselling guide offers an integrated approach to process improvement that delivers quick and substantial results in quality and productivity in diverse settings. The authors explore their Model for Improvement that worked with international improvement efforts at multinational companies as well as in different industries such as healthcare and public agencies. This edition includes new information that shows how to accelerate improvement by spreading changes across multiple sites. The book presents a practical tool kit of ideas, examples, and applications.

Medical residents in hospitals are often required to be on duty for long hours. In 2003 the organization overseeing graduate medical education adopted common program requirements to restrict resident workweeks, including limits to an average of 80 hours over 4 weeks and the longest consecutive period of work to 30 hours in order to protect patients and residents from unsafe conditions resulting from excessive fatigue. Resident Duty Hours provides a timely examination of how those requirements were implemented and their impact on safety, education, and the training institutions. An in-depth review of the evidence on sleep and human performance indicated a need to increase opportunities for sleep during residency training to prevent acute and chronic sleep deprivation and minimize the risk of fatigue-related errors. In addition to recommending opportunities for on-duty sleep during long duty periods and breaks for sleep of appropriate lengths between work periods, the committee also recommends enhancements of supervision, appropriate workload, and changes in the work environment to improve conditions for safety and learning. All residents, medical educators, those involved with academic training institutions, specialty societies, professional groups, and consumer/patient safety organizations will find this book useful to advocate for an improved culture of safety.