Improving Healthcare Team Performance

Teams and collaboration have become an expectation in most healthcare facilities and environments. It is accepted that high performance, patient focused teams are critical to quality patient care. However, there is often a wide gap between traditional practices and the new behaviours and practices required for teamwork and collaboration. Improving Health Care Team Performance goes beyond theory to provide the knowledge, tools, and techniques required to develop a single team, or to develop an organization wide team based culture, from which exceptional patient care emerges.

Most uniquely it emphasizes that effective teamwork goes far beyond team dynamics and provides detailed description of additional requirements, such as shared learning and change compatibility, and how to fulfill them.

A practical handbook for healthcare leaders striving to ensure a superior patient experience and high quality of care, Improving Healthcare Team Performance not only provides specifics on how to develop high functioning teams, whether multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, or departmental but also offers those dealing with the common healthcare leadership challenges of low morale, poor communication, interpersonal conflict, and lack of knowledge sharing the tools to take immediate action to improve performance. Providing a proven approach to addressing and preventing everyday issues impacting patient care, Improving Health Care Team Performance contains everything needed to identify areas of greatest need within a team or department, take targeted action to address key gaps, and measure progress towards positive change.

• Presents a clear depiction of what constitutes collaboration and a high-performing patient focused team. This includes the skills and practices required to improve team performance and ultimately the quality of patient care, how to develop new attitudes and behaviours within the team, as well as the leadership requirements for success in a patient focused, team based culture.
• Provides a set of development tools accessible online to help the reader quickly and easily apply the knowledge gleaned.
• Offers targeted solutions including tips/recommendations, a step-by-step approach for affecting necessary change at every level of the organization, and skills and team development activities.

Designed for leaders working in any healthcare environment, Improving Health Care Team Performance is a practical approach to improving team performance and the quality of patient care.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix

FOREWORD BY DR. KEN MILNE xi

INTRODUCTION 1

PART I: THE 7 ELEMENTS OF A HIGH PERFORMANCE HEALTHCARE TEAM 11

CHAPTER 1: When Groups Become Teams 13

CHAPTER 2: Healthy Climate: A Cornerstone of the Staff and Patient Experience 19

CHAPTER 3: Cohesiveness: Achieving the Common Goal of Exceptional Patient Care 41

CHAPTER 4: Open Communication: The Heart of Quality Patient Care 59

CHAPTER 5: Change Compatibility: From Rigidity to Flexibility 75

CHAPTER 6: Team Members’ Contribution: The Sum of the Parts 87

CHAPTER 7: Shared Leadership: The Path to Empowered Team Members 95

CHAPTER 8: Shared Learning: Propelling the Team Forward 103

PART II: MAKING IT HAPPEN: ACHIEVING IMPROVED TEAM PERFORMANCE 117

CHAPTER 9: The Team Development Process 119

CHAPTER 10: The Leadership Balancing Act 137

CHAPTER 11: Facilitation: The Skill that Determines the Success of the Process 151

CHAPTER 12: The Leader as Coach 173

PART III: THE TOOLS TO MAKE IT HAPPEN 187

CHAPTER 13: Team Development Exercises 189

ENDNOTES 259

BIBLIOGRAPHY 263

ABOUT THE AUTHORS 265

INDEX 267

Leslie Bendaly is recognized as a forward thinker and practitioner in the areas of leadership, teamwork and organizational change. She is the founder of Kinect Inc. and author of several books on leadership including Strength in Numbers, Winner Instinct and Leadership on the Run. Her models, tools and publications are used in organizations worldwide and her books have been selected as mandatory reading for MBA and other postgraduate programs in both the USA and Canada.

Nicole Bendaly is president of Kinect Inc. and has developed a reputation as an acute observer and interpreter of organizational behaviour in healthcare. She applies her knowledge and experience to the design and implementation of learning solutions and assessment tools that support the development of patient-focused cultural change and improved leadership and team performance. A number of these are used in over 200 healthcare organizations across North America.

"Great leadership starts with deep personal reflection. This new addition to the leadership library will help create the conditions for sustainable change and transformation. It blends theory with practical how-to tools."
– Hugh MacLeod, CEO, Canadian Patient Safety Institute

Improving Healthcare Team Performance is a practical handbook that provides the knowledge, tools, and techniques required to develop a team-based culture within a healthcare environment that will result in exceptional patient care. Most importantly, the authors emphasize that effective teamwork goes far beyond team dynamics—and provide strategies for fulfilling each of the 7 Requirements that differentiate high-performance healthcare teams from the rest.

As healthcare leaders strive to ensure patient safety and a high quality of patient care amid the challenges of shrinking resources, less-than-optimally-functioning teams, and low staff morale, this book recognizes those challenges and offers actionable steps to improve performance by

Depicting clearly what constitutes a high performing, patient-focused team

Offering targeted solutions, including team development exercises complete with facilitator's guides and handouts, tips and recommendations, and a step-by-step approach for effecting necessary change at every level of the organization

Providing a set of online development tools to help the reader quickly and easily apply the knowledge gained

Designed for leaders working in any healthcare environment, Improving Healthcare Team Performance not only provides specifics on how to develop high-functioning teams, but also offers guidance on common healthcare leadership challenges along with the tools to create needed change.