Teamwork in Nursing

Teamwork is one of the most important parts of being a successful organization, especially when it involves healthcare. To be a successful nurse in any setting, being able to work as a team is crucial. When teams coordinate care, they decrease the level of stress patients may experience and positively affect outcomes. In addition to easing patient concerns about treatments and procedures while raising efficiency, teamwork may reduce the number of issues related to nurse burnout. The short YouTube video, Team Work Inspirational Video, by PK Production, did a great job expressing the importance of teamwork by explaining that when you replace “I” with “We” even illness can become wellness (PK Production, 2019). Even in a patient’s darkest moments, if they feel safe around us and that us nurses are all working together to achieve the best possible outcome for this patient, it will make their experience that much more bearable. This video also went on to illustrate that we can do so much more when we just work together as a team. I loved how the video explained that sometimes we win, but sometimes we learn (PK Production, 2019). In any healthcare profession there will be trials, tribulations, and mistakes; what is important is learning from them

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Teamwork Defined.

Teamwork is defined in many ways, however one I especially prefer is “the interaction of two or more professionals about behaviors, cognitions and attitudes, which contributes to reaching shared goals through interdependent performance” (Holmes, 2020). This is especially important in nursing because patient care is not a one-person job. As a nurse, we constantly work with different doctors, specialties, families, and departments, this makes working well with others and as a team crucial in having the best patient outcomes. In recent years, the World Health Organization has increased its focus on teamwork in inter-professional healthcare teams to improve patient safety (Holmes, 2020). In addition to giving patients the best possible experience when we care for them, optimizing patient safety is a key result of working well as a team.

Conclusion.

Teamwork is essential in healthcare. Fundamentals of teamwork include good communication and collaboration between co-workers reducing the risk something is overlooked, potentially leading to an error being made resulting in harm to the patient. Nurses must possess a wide array of traits in addition to working well with others and as a member of a team, but teamwork is one of the most important ones.

References

Holmes, T. (2020, March 1). A qualitative study of how inter-professional teamwork influences perioperative nursing. Wiley Online Library. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/nop2.422 (Links to an external site.)

PK Production [YouTube]. (2019, April 3). Team Work Inspirational Video [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVk06wpq8zg&t=52s