Teamwork in the Healthcare Setting

Introduction

Teamwork enables different healthcare workers, nurses and doctors with diverse skills and knowledge to work collaborate towards achieving the common healthcare goals. This report will demonstrate how the management team of Trinity social care home can conduct effective teamwork in the workplace thereby integrating the diverse skills, knowledge and abilities of all health and social care professionals to provide a high standard of care to patients. This report will also discuss and evaluate the impact that teamwork has on the health and social care setting. Then this report will identify and analyse the barriers that are associated with effective teamwork in any healthcare context. Finally, this report will discuss the types of roles that are required to be played to form a dedicated and cohesive healthcare team.

How management at Trinity Social Care Home can develop an effective team:

In health and social care, good team building is essential for directing all the team members to work towards the common purpose of serving and caring for patients (McLeod et al. 2019). In the case of Trinity Social Care Home, management can follow the below-mentioned strategies in terms of developing an effective and good healthcare team that would work collaboratively and synergistically towards achieving the common healthcare goals.

Establishing good leadership:

As mentioned by Lavelle et al. (2020), while it comes to develop an effective healthcare team, the first thing that healthcare leaders must develop and implement is an effective and highly appropriate leadership framework. In Trinity Social Care Home, management must develop an effective leadership framework that would bring all the health and social care professionals together to work on the shared purpose of providing quality care to patients. For avoiding the risk of conflict and mismanagement that are associated with the workplace diversity in Trinity Social Care Home, management can develop a democratic leadership framework that will enable the healthcare managers to encourage all the team members to be involved in effective decision making. On the contrary, Gharaveis et al. (2018) argued that, in the case of a decentralized and diverse healthcare system, autocratic leadership is more relevant than the democratic, which enables the healthcare leaders to make obligations for all the team members to follow and comply with the effective teamworking rules

Developing focus on teamwork:

Another important strategy for forming an effective team is fostering a teamwork mentality within the healthcare workers (Ryan, 2017). The healthcare managers of Trinity Social Care Home must focus on encouraging doctors, nurses, practitioners, health and social care staff and other healthcare members to be involved in collaborative working thereby shearing their skills, decisions, perspectives and ideas (Hearn, 2021). Through developing the skills of shared work and partnership working within the healthcare workers, healthcare managers can foster the teamwork perspectives in employees which will enable them to work synergistically towards the common healthcare goals.

Conducting training and development for teamwork:

The management team of Trinity Social Care Home can conduct effective training and development programs for all their employees. As opined by Schmutz et al. (2019), in health and social care settings, for effective team building, healthcare leaders must provide the appropriate training to all the health and social care staffs and professionals to make them prepared for working on the shared purpose of healthcare. In this context, for forming a good healthcare team, the management of Trinity Social Care Home can provide effective training to all employees to provide them with the opportunity in developing effective teamwork skills such as how to be involved in shared decision-making process, the conflict management framework and synergistic working process.

Develop effective communication:

Team building health and social care context is strongly associated with developing an effective and clear communication system (Adamson et al. 2018). The management of Trinity Social Care Home must conduct a transparent, concise and effective communication process in the workplace in which all the health and social care staff can be connected during their work schedule. As mentioned by Xantus and Zavori (2020) close loop communication is one of the most essential forms of communication in team building, which enables alter health and social care professionals and staff to conduct a clear and transparent verbal information delivery to each other’s thereby staying interconnected all time. The management team must emphasize developing a closed-loop communication in which all staffs and healthcare professionals can discuss all the healthcare issues, patient-related topics and treatment-related discussions thereby can share their own opinion regarding these aspects.

Plan collaboratively:

According to Dirks (2019), collaborative planning is an important aspect of developing an effective team in health and social care setting, the management of Trinity Social Care Home must emphasize involving all health and social care professionals to make an effective plan for improving the care experiences for patients by improving the quality and standard of the care delivery. The collaborative plan brings all the health and social care staff together to share their professional knowledge, skills and abilities in developing innovative healthcare strategies in terms of improving healthcare outcomes.

Impact of effective teamwork in health and social care setting:

Teamwork has a potential impact not only on the care outcomes and quality of care but also on the entire health and social care framework (Herzberg et al. 2019). Effective teamwork will have the following impacts on the health and social care system of Trinity Social Care Home

Improving the quality of care delivery:

Through developing effective teamwork, the management of Trinity Social Care Home can improve the quality and standard of care delivery to patients. As mentioned by Gary et al. (2018), good teamwork has positive impacts on the care delivery to patients in which it improves the way of providing compassionate and high-quality care to each patient and meets patients' holistic needs. Effective teamwork will enable the health and social care professionals of Trinity Social Care Home to work in a multidisciplinary team thereby using their valuable knowledge, decision making and professional skills in determining all health needs of patients thereby developing the appropriate care plan to meet these needs. On the contrary Profit et al. (2017) argued that, in the case of dealing with critical patients with a complex health condition, teamwork can create conflict, arguments and unhealthy competition among team members which will hamper the overall care delivery process. For avoiding such mismanagement, the management team of Trinity Social Care Home must develop a productive team that will be enough resilient to any healthcare environment and can deal with any kind of team conflict.

Improve productivity of healthcare staff:

Teamwork in health and social care settings improves the professional skill, knowledge and abilities of team members thereby providing them with the opportunity in conducting systematic professional development (Incze et al. 2021). Effective teamwork in Trinity Social Care Home will enable each health and social care professionals which work in a multidisciplinary team to share each other knowledge, skills, decision and abilities thereby improving each other’s strength. As argued by Gary et al. (2018), although teamwork enhances the team’s productivity, a large team with diverse team members can create misunderstanding which can interfere with the ability of healthcare staff to meet the common healthcare goals. However, if implementing correctly, the management of Trinity Social Care Home can utilize effective teamwork in having positive impacts on the overall, the productivity of the entire healthcare team.

Better patients’ outcomes:

Teamwork is associated with better patient outcomes (Lee and Doran, 2017). In Trinity Social Care Home, management can improve the patients’ outcomes by developing an effective healthcare team that would be highly efficient in determining the critical; health needs of each patient and implement the appropriate disease prevention bd management strategies to meet these health needs. moreover, effective teamwork will help all the health and social care workers in Trinity Social Care Home to work collaboratively with the pharmacist to ensure the safe and effective use of all medicines for patients.

Reduce nurse turnover:

Teamwork will reduce the nurses’ turnover by reducing the individual job stress on them. In modern health and social care, nurses and other healthcare staff have to deal with severe workloads which pressurize many of the healthcare staffs to quit their jobs (Manspeaker et al. 2019). In Trinity Social Care Home different health and social care staffs with diverse cultures, backgrounds and skills work together to meet the ever-increasing health needs of patients. In this context, through conducting an effective team, the management of Trinity Social Care Home can provide the opportunity to all healthcare employees to distribute and share their tasks and job stress thereby allowing them to feel comfortable while working.

Reduce medical errors:

An effective team building can help the health and social care staff of Trinity Social Care Home to overcomes the risk of different medical errors by conducting collaborative discussion, shared decision making and multidisciplinary working (Ballangrud et al. 2017). Through work in a good team, all the healthcare professionals of Trinity Social Care Home would be able to develop and implement effective as well as innovative strategies to cope up with any challenge in the health and social care setting.

Barriers to effective teamwork:

Several barriers are associated with the teamwork that the management of Trinity Social Care Home needs to consider to overcome these barriers systematically.

Unhealthy competition among staff:

In Trinity Social Care Home there is a high risk of developing unhealthy competition as the diversity among health and social care staffs can lead to differences in their opinion views, perspectives and work process. As opined by Hedges et al. (2019), in modern health care fields, the major barrier to effective teamwork is unhealthy competition among staffs which makes staffs to be involved in nasty games of hurting each other’s emotions and self-respect. The passion for grabbing self-recognition ha good designation, health and social care staffs in Trinity Social Care Home can be involved in the unhealthy competition which can interfere with the mortals and ethical values of the teamwork.

Lack of teamwork skills:

Lack of teamwork skills such as resilience, flexibility, shared decision-making ability and problem-solving ability, can pose potential barriers to effective teamwork in Trinity Social Care Home (McLeod et al. 2019). As in this healthcare organisation, there is high diversity among health and social care staff, it is natural that they would differ in their work process and opinion which can develop constraints for them to work in a team.

Poor communication:

The lack of open and transparent communication among health and social care staffs in Trinity Social Care Home can cause unnecessary misunderstanding and arguments within groups which will hamper the team's spirit (Lavelle et al. 2020).

Team conflicts:

Conflict and opinion mismatches are the two important barriers to teamwork (Gharaveis et al. 2018). In Trinity Social Care Home, the diversity of the health and social care staff can create severe team conflict and misunderstanding among staffs which would reduce the motivation and ability of healthcare staffs to work on common healthcare goals.

The types of roles required to form an effective and cohesive team:

For forming a cohesive and effective team, the management of Trinity Social Care Home needs to perform the following roles:

Fostering teamwork personality within every health and social care staff is important for encouraging them to develop an effective team (Ryan, 2017). In this context, the management of Trinity Social Care Home must conduct official meetings and conferences in which all the health and social care staff will be motivated for developing teamwork skills in terms of working towards the shared purpose of patients.

Developing an effective conflict management framework within healthcare team which will mitigate all kind of conflict within team members thereby maintaining healthy and trustworthy relationship among them (Hearn, 2021).

Developing close loop communication and a transparent information delivery system within the team will enable all the health and social care staffs of Trinity Social Care Home to make open discussion on any work-related aspects thereby reducing the chances of any misunderstanding and conflict (Schmutz et al. 2019).

Conclusion

From the above-mentioned discussion, it can be concluded that teamwork is important in health and social care settings to improve organizational productivity and enhance the quality of care delivery. For building an effective team, healthcare leaders can develop different strategies such as implementing an appropriate leadership strategy, improving teamwork skills in staffs, developing team goals and fostering teamwork personality among healthcare staffs. There are many barriers to teamwork such as lack of transparent communication among healthcare staffs, poor information delivery, lack of teamwork skills, team conflict and unhealthy competition within the team. In this context, healthcare leaders must develop effective strategies that can enable them to overcomes all these barriers and build a highly productive team.

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