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Reflect on your experiences as a member of a clinical team. What makes a team effective or ineffective in terms of achieving expected outcomes for the patients? (Saunders, 2014)

In the study by Lingard et al. (2017), it describes an effective team as one that includes all healthcare professionals who are caring for a patient to communicate with each other, as well as make decisions based on the expertise of all the team members. It is important to understand the culture of a workplace since that impacts the team dynamics. As a clinical team member, I have experienced a variety of situations where the team can be effective or ineffective in terms of achieving expected patient outcomes.

As a registered nurse (RN) working in the intensive care unit (ICU), I have experienced working together with many different healthcare professionals. Since the patients in the ICU are very critical, it is crucial that each team member is consulted when making any kind of decision. The proper way of doing this is to have effective rounding. For example, during the rounds on my unit we have the critical care doctor, nurse practitioner or physician assistant, residents, clinical nutritionist, pharmacist, respiratory therapist, case management, the charge nurse, and the RN. All of these healthcare professionals are communicating with each other as they move on from one patient room to another. Usually, when the turn comes to rounds on my patients, I give a brief overview of any overnight changes that have occurred and then proceed to ask the doctor if he/she would like me to go through the patient’s history. Usually, at that time the residents take over and give a brief overview of the patients' care throughout the hospital stay from the day of admission. During this time everyone is listening to each other and in the end the doctor inputs his plan of care for the patient while asking the nutritionist, pharmacist, and respiratory therapist if they want to make any changes to the plan. Once everyone has discussed patients’ plan of care, the doctor asks the RN if anything else is needed at this point. This thorough evaluation of patient care planning improves patient outcomes and decreases their stay in the hospital.

I have also seen ineffective healthcare team approaches. Once, during change of shift, I was getting report in the morning from a night shift RN and it seemed like she was in a hurry to give report. She was speeding through all the necessary information while I was trying to write everything down, I asked her to slow her speed so that I could write all the important information regarding the patient, but she didn’t seem to slow down. As a healthcare team member, I felt unsupported and stressed regarding how I was going to properly take care of the patient due to being overwhelmed. Luckily my preceptor was with me and after the RN had finished giving report, my preceptor debriefed with me and make sure I understood how our day was going to plan out. In most healthcare settings, research shows that ineffective communication amongst healthcare professionals is one of the leading causes of patient harm and medical errors (Carlson, 2012). In acute care settings, ineffective communication can cause an increase in the length of stay for patients in the hospital, as well as more rapid turnovers for the staff.

Each healthcare professional holds responsibility in their effectiveness of team-building approaches so that their patients can be cared for holistically.

References

Carlson, E. A. (2012). Improving patient safety through improved communication and teamwork. Orthopaedic Nursing, 31(3), 190-192. https://doi.org/10.1097/nor.0b013e3182558db6 (Links to an external site.)

Lingard, L., Sue-Chue-Lam, C., Tait, G. R., Bates, J., Shadd, J., & Schulz, V. (2017). Pulling together and pulling apart: Influences of convergence and divergence on distributed healthcare teams. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 22(5), 1085-1099. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-016-9741-2