Ineffective Team Communication

Lack of proper communication across multidisciplinary teams leads to serious adverse effects and medical errors. Furthermore, it results in the inefficient use of healthcare resources. Research indicates that ineffective communication among healthcare professionals is one of the leading causes of medical errors and patient harm (Mason, Gardner, Outlaw, & O'Grady, 2016). The Joint Commission cited communication as the core component of teamwork and the root cause in nearly 60 percent of sentinel events. The purpose of my capstone project is to develop, implement, and evaluate a comprehensive team communication strategy that would be utilized in the preoperative setting, reduce errors and increase patient safety during surgery. This strategy is aligned with the QSEN competency, Teamwork and Collaboration. Function effectively within nursing and inter-professional teams, fostering open communication, mutual respect, and shared decision-making to achieve quality patient care (QSEN Institute, 2014). …show more content…
It raised awareness as to the guidelines of DVT prophylaxis during surgery. In addition, we caught patient allergies to our standard prophylactic antibiotic that may have been missed. I also found that patients like being included in the huddle, instead of being talked around. Further efforts to evaluate the strategy of surgical team huddles using additional measures is ongoing, further research is recommended to determine effectiveness and sustainability. Longitudinal studies can be utilized to determine the effectiveness and sustainability of the strategies over time; and utilizing specific patient-centered outcome measures and staff-related measures, such as satisfaction, recruitment and retention (Weaver et al.,