Question

How do you evaluate the effectiveness of collaboration between departments in the hospital settings and the impact it had on the team cohesiveness and patient/ client care

Answer 1

Patient safety experts agree that communication and teamwork skills are essential for providing quality health care. When all clinical and nonclinical staff collaborate effectively, health care teams can improve patient outcomes, prevent medical errors, improve efficiency and increase patient satisfaction.

In today’s health care system, delivery processes involve numerous interfaces and patient handoffs among multiple health care practitioners with varying levels of educational and occupational training. During the course of a 4-day hospital stay, a patient may interact with 50 different employees, including physicians, nurses, technicians, and others. Effective clinical practice thus involves many instances where critical information must be accurately communicated. Team collaboration is essential. When health care professionals are not communicating effectively, patient safety is at risk for several reasons: lack of critical information, misinterpretation of information, unclear orders over the telephone, and overlooked changes in status.

Lack of communication creates situations where medical errors can occur. These errors have the potential to cause severe injury or unexpected patient death. Medical errors, especially those caused by a failure to communicate, are a pervasive problem in today’s health care organizations

Traditional medical education emphasizes the importance of error-free practice, utilizing intense peer pressure to achieve perfection during both diagnosis and treatment. Errors are therefore perceived normatively as an expression of failure.

Top 5 Benefits of Teamwork in Nursing

• Improved Patient Satisfaction and Outcome. Healthcare professionals serve patients not as individual providers, but as multidisciplinary teams.

• Higher Job Satisfaction.

• Increased Professional Accountability.

• Lower Rates of Job Turnover.

• Improved Engagement in the Workplace.