Process Excellence in the emergency department is a team collaboration that has a focus of interest for improving quality of care for patients. Team collaboration in health care is recognized as a group of health care workers from different disciplines working together on a common goal. This particular “multidisciplinary” (Finkelman, 2012, p. 336) team meeting was a collaboration of team members that included: the Emergency Room (ER) Director, ER physicians, and ER nurses, ER Head Health Unit Coordinator, ER Business Manager, Senior Process Excellence Coordinator, Director of Information Management, and the Senior Marketing Specialist. This team’s purpose aims to organize a team approach to care for patients treated in the emergency department and focuses on the care approach that provides continuity of care to patients. This focus on the patient is aimed to provide not only a higher level of patient satisfaction, but also to improve professional satisfaction by developing approach by emergency room staff to provide care as team collaboration. This process excellence team has been meeting for over two years in hopes of this goal being reached. This paper aims to help the reader gain a better understanding of this specific team collaboration, the roles of its members, and the communication methods utilized.
Initial understanding of a process excellence team is an important foundation for understanding this specific team collaboration. Process excellence as described by Carter (2010) is a “Six Sigma process …used to eliminate defects and inefficiencies in a process or service.” In healthcare, our business is patient satisfaction. “Six Sigma” (Carter, 2010) is a team process that utilizes an approach to effectively control ...
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Evaluation and review should be an ongoing process of learning, embedding a process of continual improvement and development. The key to evaluating is knowing what we are measuring. We cannot monitor and evaluate the team’s progress towards agreed objectives without clear advance planning of what we want to do and how it will be achieve. Effective strategic and operational planning, incorporating clear measurable objectives, is therefore an important
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rofessionals from different disciplines collaborating to provide care to patients. Effectively coordinated and collaborative inter-professional teams are essential to the care and treatment of patients (Rowlands & Callen, 2013; Doyle, 2008; Ruhstaller, Roe, Thürlimann & Nicoll, 2006; Simpson & Patton, 2012, p. 300). Communication is a process of conferring information between individuals through use of speech, writing or various other means, and is critical to the success of a multidisciplinary team (MDT) (Higgs, McAllister & Sefton, 2012, p. 5; Rowlands & Callen, 2013; Sargeant, Loney & Murphy, 2008). An MDT must use multiple strategies to enhance communication and ensure their success (Doyle, 2008). An effective MDT generates opportunities that benefit healthcare, which is the reason for the recent dominance of inter-professional care in health practice (Simpson & Patton, 2012, p. 300; Rowlands & Callen, 2013). Many barriers prevent effective communication within inter-professional teams. Lack of communication within MDTs presents challenges to their success, leading to numerous consequences, including the failure of the MDT (London Deanery, 2012; Sargeant et al, 2008). Communication between professionals is the key factor underpinning the potential success or failure of inter-professional teams, the outcome of the functioning of MDTs will either benefit or impair care of patients.
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Working in the health care setting, teamwork and collaboration are used frequently to insure that everything runs correctly and efficiently. According to qsen.org, teamwork and collaboration consists of functioning effectively within nursing and inter-professional teams, fostering open communication, mutual respect, and shared decision-making to achieve quality patient care. While assessing the patient a nurse can come into contact and work with many different individuals. These can include other nurses, doctors, therapists, and family
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Collaboration is the foundation to success in any team. In the healthcare setting, interprofessional collaboration (IC) has been a significant trademark among numerous highly successful innovations. Collaboration between nurses and other healthcare providers improves the quality of care, coordination, and communication between the team leading to increased patient safety. Working in a team to achieve common goals implies open communication, respect for others, mutual trust, and honesty. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the meaning of interprofessional collaboration, its implications for practice, describe the role of IC in the provision of patient and family-centered care,
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The demands on health care providers to provide the best quality care for patients is increasing. With added responsibilities and demands on our health care workers, it is hard not become overwhelmed and forget the reason and purpose of our profession. However, there is a way where all professionals can meet and come together for a common cause, which is the patient. A new approach in patient care is coming of age. This approach allows all health care professionals to collaborate and explore the roles of other professions in the hope of creating a successful health care team. This approach is referred to as the Interprofessional Collaboration Practice (IPC). To become an effective leader and follower, each professions will need to work together
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Leadership is defined by Northouse (2013) as a transactional experience between persons whereby one individual influences a group of individuals who have a mutual goal. Leaders may hold authority attributed to them by the group, substantiated by how they are regarded, whether or not they have positional authority. In contrast to management, where the goal is to provide order through control, leadership is concerned with producing change through transformation and practical adjustments (Northouse, 2013). Because of the nature of nursing, its obligation to promoting health and healing of people, nursing leadership concentrates change efforts based on human needs and concurrently ponders the needs of administrations largely because they understand the interrelatedness of the two influences.
A team can be best defined as “a small number of people with complementary skills, committed to a common purpose, performance goals and approaches for which they hold themselves mutually accountable” (Katzenbach & Smith, 1993, p. 46). A healthcare organization can achieve success only when every member of the team works collaboratively as a unit and understands the context of the teamwork to the greatest degree possible. Intensive care unit is a high risk area of health care, which needs a high-functioning, cohesive, and coordinated team to deliver safe and effective care to the patients. Lack of efficient teamwork among and between the teams of caregivers could result in serious patient safety consequences (Borkowski, 2015). Moreover, there