Importance of teamwork

In health care, being able to lead a team is equally as important as being part of a team. There are a number of facilitators and barriers to effective team work in nursing. Some examples of barriers might be lateral violence, poor communication, peer pressures, and being over-worked, or not being skilled enough. Some facilitators might be effective leadership, healthy workplace, your level of emotional intelligence. Consider what would make a team best able to meet its goals. Would you include the patient as a team member?

Interdisciplinary teamwork is one of the most efficient aspects of delivering healthcare to patients that ensure not only patient satisfaction but also ensures safe and quality care of the patients. It may be defined as the two or more people who can interact interdependently with each other to serve a common purpose (Kalisch et al., 2015). The nursing professionals in a team are seen to work towards a measurable goal that in turn benefits from effective leadership. Effective leadership in teamwork helps to maintain stability in the team while encouraging honest discussion about the needs and requirements of the patients, effective feedback sharing within the professionals and working collaboratively in problem solving. This assignment will show importance of teamwork in nursing, facilitators of effective teamwork in nursing. Barriers to teamwork and recommendations to develop teamwork.

In the present generation, clinical care is becoming complex day by day. With the advancement of the medical and scientific inventions in the present generation, the life expectancy of people had increased. However, the older population although living longer lives are going through poor quality of their lives due to a number of chronic disorders that are occurring to them as co morbid disorders (Orr, 2017). Treatments of such complex care requires teamwork among the nurses as only one nurse cannot care for all the disorders of the patients with the same affectivity as more number of nurses can result by their collaborative output on the health of the patients. Better the teamwork among the healthcare nurses, the patient would achieve higher quality of care and this would include patient satisfaction and patient recovery.

Many other benefits are associated with effective teamwork among the nurses. Researchers have found out that when nursing professionals work together, there is reduction in the number of medication errors and reduction in waiting times of the patients (Yi, 2016). This would increase patient safety. It also helps in reduction of the burnouts among the nursing professionals. Effective coordination helps in reduction of the emotional pressures and work burdens on the nurses and help in equal distribution among the members. This reduces excessive work burden on some and helps in equal distribution of the burden among many thereby preventing occupational health hazard.

Facilitators of effective teamwork in nursing

Effective leadership:

Effective leadership is one of the most important aspects of a successful teamwork in nursing. Often the nursing professionals may face various types of issues that affect collaborative work output in the healthcare systems. The main stakeholder who faces a loss and goes through suffering is the patient. Therefore, the most important activity of a leader in a team is to keep the team accountable (Weller, Boyd & Cumin, 2014). Many members of a team are highly proactive while there are many members who conceal themselves with the idea that their work would be done by others. The leader of the nurses take the duty of effective monitoring and evaluation and ensures that work is equally shared by all so that chances of burn outs become less. They are also seen to empower the team members by making them motivate to work beyond their potentials. They also help to simplify the goals and helps by streamlining the decision making process. They also take part in orientation and education of the embers so that they can work with correct behavior and attitude in teams (Tofil et al., 2014). They also take part in nurturing as well as encouragement. They also help in assessment as well as correction of the different improper decisions, activities or skills undertaken by the nurses. Moreover, many nurses may go through different stressful phases emotionally and mentally. Therefore, they take part in the listening and counseling nursing professionals helping them to maintain unity and bonding in teamwork. They also help in establishing group emphasis.

Healthy workplace:

Organizational culture has great contribution to the development of the teamwork with the workplace. The organization who promotes working in teams are found to achieve higher patient satisfaction and better reputation than those organizations who do not provide importance to it. Organizations who try to influence nurses to work in team mainly help the nurses in the end by reducing the physical and mental burden of the work and these have positive outcomes (Valentine et al., 2015). The nurses feel that their organization cares for them and hence participates in effective teamwork. Moreover, organizational culture who promotes meeting of feedback sharing sessions among the teams are seen to provide best collaborative output as it is believed that this reduces power struggles and conflicts and blames games. Therefore effective teamwork development is also a contribution of developed organizational culture among many different teams.

Barriers to effective teamwork

Level of emotional intelligence:

Emotional intelligence possessed by an individual would in turn decide how well the individuals would be participating as an effective team member. Emotional intelligence is mainly comprised of five important factors. These are self-awareness, self-regulation, social skills, empathy as well as motivation (Horseley et al., 2016). Those who have high level of emotional intelligence can actively socialize with others in the team, empathize with the situations, motivate oneself and the others and self aware of their own emotions and can regulate their emotions effectively. This in turn results in the development of stronger bonds with the other members as the positive aspects of the nurses are well perceived by the other members. In this way, people with higher emotional intelligence become dearer to the other members. Therefore when all the members are able to possess high level of emotional intelligence, strong team bonding can be developed.

Poor communication:

Ineffective communication in the healthcare centers is a barrier that leads to poor teamwork. Many of the nursing professionals do not have proper verbal communication skills. Some may have impatient listening skill, fast speaking issue, improper feedback giving and receiving skills and many others (Endacott et al., 2015). All these may impacts sharing and documentation of information during delegation or during communication about patient health. Non-verbal communication skills like improper eye contact, gesture, body language, voice, tone, pitch and others may affect the receiver and this may result in development of negative feeling among the nursing members. This affects teamwork.

Over work:

With the increasing advancement in medical science, the population has increased as more people are living for longer days. However, their quality of lives has not developed and they are living with co-morbidities. Therefore, the number of patients seeking care has also increased largely. As a result, nursing professionals are trying to serve more number of individuals within the fixed set of time than they used to attend earlier (Carson et al., 2018). Therefore, they get tired of fulfilling the needs of all patients and caring for them without taking any breaks due to large demand. They become over worked that result in physical and mental issues. Therefore, they really get no time to interact with others in the team and thereby cannot share their emotional suffering and turmoil. These affect the formation of bonding and relations and trusts are not formed easily. Therefore, Overwork may result in the formation of effective team and application of proper teamwork.

Power struggles:

Often different types of power struggles are seen among the nurses that prevent effective teamwork. In many cases, it is found that the junior nurses do not get proper support from the senior nurses and believes that the senior nurses suffer from superiority complex. Again, on the other hand, it is found that the senior nurses state that the junior nurses do not provide them respect and do not ask for suggestions, as they believe that they are knowledgeable and skillful enough. Therefore, a series of blame games often arise in the organizations where none of the members wants to collaborate with each other and therefore indulge in blame games (Martin et al. 2015). Therefore, it results in creation of a barrier in teamwork and teams cannot perform well resulting in medication errors, administration errors, communication errors and many others.

Recommendations to develop effective teamwork:

The first recommendation would be to develop effective communication skills. Once the members develop effective communication skills, they would be able to share feedbacks about each other, engage in informal talks with each other’s, solve their misunderstandings, overcome conflicts and many others. When transparency is developed among the team members through effective communication, bonding will be developed and this will help in developing effective teamwork.

The second recommendation is that every nursing professional should be adaptable. Often various types of situations may arise within the teams. One member may get ill and may not come to shift. In such situation, nurses should take the responsibility with the focus on the bigger picture of the goal and helping the team by performing the responsibilities of the absent member (Logan et al., 2018). Many nurses in the team may not be well skilled. Therefore, the professionals should help such nurses to develop the skills and treat the patient at the same time as an example. This is mainly called adaptability of the situation. Every nursing professional should develop this trait as this is one of the most important trait that helps in effective teamwork.

The third recommendation would be knowing the plan and sticking with it. Every of the healthcare member should make sure that they known their respective roles and if not known, then should be clarified with the leaders. When each of the members has clear idea about their own roles and are also aware of the bigger goal and mission, teamwork become much easier (alSayah et al., 2014). When each of the members performs their individual duty at the same timework collaboratively with each, best teamwork would be achieved.

The fourth recommendation would be getting to know about the team members. Initiatives should be taken by which all the members would be engaging in informal conversations, going for informal outings, participate in fun activities and many others. Knowing them as a person enhances trust and bonding which are two important goals of teamwork.

References:

Al Sayah, F., Szafran, O., Robertson, S., Bell, N. R., & Williams, B. (2014). Nursing perspectives on factors influencing interdisciplinary teamwork in the Canadian primary care setting. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 23(19-20), 2968-2979.

Carson, O. M., Laird, E. A., Reid, B. B., Deeny, P. G., & McGarvey, H. E. (2018). Enhancing teamwork using a creativity-focussed learning intervention for undergraduate nursing students-A pilot study. Nurse education in practice, 30, 20-26.

Endacott, R., Bogossian, F. E., Cooper, S. J., Forbes, H., Kain, V. J., Young, S. C., … & First2Act Team. (2015). Leadership and teamwork in medical emergencies: performance of nursing students and registered nurses in simulated patient scenarios. Journal of clinical nursing, 24(1-2), 90-100.

Horsley, T. L., Reed, T., Muccino, K., Quinones, D., Siddall, V. J., & McCarthy, J. (2016). Developing a foundation for interprofessional education within nursing and medical curricula. Nurse educator, 41(5), 234-238.

Kalisch, B. J., Aebersold, M., McLaughlin, M., Tschannen, D., & Lane, S. (2015). An intervention to improve nursing teamwork using virtual simulation. Western journal of nursing research, 37(2), 164-179.

Logan, T. R., & Michael Malone, D. (2018). Nurses’ perceptions of teamwork and workplace bullying. Journal of nursing management.

Martin, H. A., & Ciurzynski, S. M. (2015). Situation, background, assessment, and recommendation–Guided huddles improve communication and teamwork in the emergency department. Journal of Emergency Nursing, 41(6), 484-488.

Orr, P. (2017). Integration of Interprofessional Education across a Community College Health Technologies Division: Promoting a Culture of Effective Communication and Teamwork.

Tofil, N. M., Morris, J. L., Peterson, D. T., Watts, P., Epps, C., Harrington, K. F., … & White, M. L. (2014). Interprofessional simulation training improves knowledge and teamwork in nursing and medical students during internal medicine clerkship. Journal of Hospital Medicine, 9(3), 189-192.

Valentine, M. A., Nembhard, I. M., & Edmondson, A. C. (2015). Measuring teamwork in health care settings: a review of survey instruments. Medical care, 53(4), e16-e30.

Weller, J., Boyd, M., & Cumin, D. (2014). Teams, tribes and patient safety: overcoming barriers to effective teamwork in healthcare. Postgraduate medical journal, postgradmedj-2012.

Yi, Y. J. (2016). Effects of team?building on communication and teamwork among nursing students. International nursing review, 63(1), 33-40