Teamwork is where a group of people collaborate to achieve the desired goal. Unity is essential because it helps people build working friendships as they work, understands each other, and do jobs correctly. Collaboration is critical when used in hospitals since it enables the patients to receive the best services and the medics to have a conducive working environment. According to my experience with teams, building teamwork is challenging. It is more of creating an organizational culture, and it is not a one-day affair since it requires not only time but also touches every aspect of the organization. Teamwork requires that every member of the institution comes on board with the backstopping with the leadership of the institution, whose main role is to ensure that there is a good collaboration among the members for effectiveness to the patients, direct caregivers, and all those who play the supportive role in the health care delivery system.
By using TeamSTEPPS, a teamwork system that offers a robust solution for improving collaboration and communication within the institution for effectiveness in the hospitals (Clapper, 2018), one can overcome challenges facing teamwork and contribute towards having better outcomes. TeamSTEPPS uses various techniques to achieve teamwork, including; Offering exemplary leadership, effective communication, proper situation monitoring, and enough mutual support (Obenrader et al., 2019). Leadership skill is the primary tool that strives to maximize the activities of team members by providing enough necessary resources, ensuring that all the team actions are understood, and facilitating proper relaying of the information changes. It involves; Organizing the team, identifying and articulating the plan, assigning responsibilities and tasks, monitoring and modifying the plan, reviewing the team’s performance, managing and allocating resources, facilitating information sharing, encouraging members to offer assistance to each other, and creating a conflict resolution mechanism in the institution. These steps, when clearly outlined, can greatly achieve teamwork.
The outcomes of these TeamSTEPPS techniques include improved performance since the skills bring about adaptability, accuracy, productivity, efficiency, and safety of the stakeholders in the institution. There is a change in the attitude of the stakeholders in the development of good team orientation and mutual trust among them. The skills also equip the people involved with knowledge of a shared mental model where people have a common understanding of the procedures in the organization.
Most workers do not find it well to correct each other or be corrected in public out of fear of embarrassment, which is a big challenge to teamwork. There are, however, better ways that can promote open and genuine communication in the work environment, including asking for employees’ input in the various decisions in the institution. This will make the employees feel important, and it will foster an open exchange of ideas and information between the management and the employees (Mahmood et al., 2021). Scheduling regular small meetings, for example, biweekly meetings will also promote honest and genuine communication since the employees will create a good rapport and develop good interpersonal skills.
In the case study where Mr. Greg, the medical technician, treated Madam Edna, the lady who had developed a blood clot after a cruise in the Mediterranean, the situation monitoring technique was appropriate. This technique would have enabled Mr. Greg to monitor the patient’s state keenly and discover that Madam Edna’s situation was beyond blood clot disorder. After a slight inquiry on the predicaments that met the patient onboard the cruise, the patient diverges from the question and is more focused on her pet cat which was to seek vet services. Greg would have dug further into why the patient was straying from the question asked using the situation monitoring technique. This would have prompted him to recommend further diagnosis and ensure that he does a follow-up with the next shift medic Madam Amy. This would have prevented the patient’s condition from deteriorating into a situation in the intensive care unit. If Madam Amy had preliminary information from Greg using the shared mental model, she would have offered continued, keen medical care. It would have saved the patient from losing blood which necessitated a blood transfusion.
Support staff in hospitals and institutions plays a crucial role in ensuring that activities flow smoothly. The unit clerk in this hospital by the name of Sheri, acting as the link between the two medics attending to patient Edna, should have practiced the mutual support technique. This technique provides timely and constructive feedback to the team. Sheri ought to have gathered more information from Medical Technician Greg on why he insisted on talking to medic Amy. By using assertive statements concerning the patient, the unit clerk should have insisted on enquiring more about what physician Greg had noted about patient Edna so that she could relay information to medic Amy.
Communication is a vital and effective technique in TeamSTEPPS. In the final interactions of the case study, Greg, the medical technician, and Sheri, the unit clerk, should have learned that if they had communicated effectively, they would have saved Edna’s condition from deteriorating. Greg, the medical technician, should have provided the information on Edna’s situation in a brief, specific, explicit, and timely manner. On the other hand, Sheri would have sought detailed information from Greg to relay it to the next shift medic Amy. The combination of TeamSTEPPS strategies of communication, mutual support, and situation monitoring would have saved the patient’s situation from deteriorating in this case study.
References
Clapper, T. C. (2018). TeamSTEPPS is an effective tool to level the hierarchy in healthcare communication by empowering all stakeholders. Journal of Communication in Healthcare, 11(4), 241-244.
Mahmood, L. S., Mohammed, C. A., & Gilbert, J. H. (2021). Interprofessional simulation education to enhance teamwork and communication skills among medical and nursing undergraduates using the TeamSTEPPS framework. Medical Journal Armed Forces India, 77, S42-S48. Web.
Obenrader, C., Broome, M. E., Yap, T. L., & Jamison, F. (2019). Changing team member perceptions by implementing TeamSTEPPS in an emergency department. Journal of emergency nursing, 45(1), 31-37. Web.