December HRO Theme of the Month- "Clear Communication"

Clear Communication

Colleagues –

Research shows that teams make fewer mistakes than do individuals, especially when each team member knows his or her responsibilities, and those of the other team members. A team can be defined as two or more individuals, who have specific roles, perform interdependent tasks, are adaptable, and share a common goal. To work effectively together, the team members must possess specific knowledge, skills, and attitudes of their own and teammate's task responsibilities, and a positive disposition toward working in a team. Based on its definition alone, it is easy to see how teamwork is critical for the delivery of health care.

However, despite the importance of teamwork in health care, most clinical units continue to function as separate collections of individual professionals. This unfortunate reality is partially due to the fact that members of these teams are rarely trained together and usually come from separate disciplines and diverse educational programs.

However, simply installing a team structure does not automatically ensure it will operate effectively. To improve patient safety, teamwork and communication must go hand in hand. The Institute of Medicine has said that the quality of communication among health care team members varies significantly and that this variability has important consequences for patient safety.

Closed‐loop communication for example is one essential feature of high reliability and one of the key patient safety goals of the Joint Commission. While closed‐loop communication is required 100% of the time in some settings such as a pilot communicating to air traffic control, it is not practiced consistently in health care. When one caregiver does not verify that information is correct or seek to understand information that may be unclear, then a mistake in decision‐making may occur. The good news is that the skill and use of?communication tools such as closed‐loop communication can be taught and implemented as a critical team behavior.

December’s HRO theme of the month is Clear Communication. North Florida / South Georgia Veterans Health System is committed to training and working with our teams to use communication tools such as closed loop communication, the 3W’s, 4 Step Assertive Tool, or S.B.A.R (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation) communication to improve the safety of our staff and Veterans. Clinical Team Training (CTT) is one way of doing this. CTT is a multidisciplinary training program that teaches teams important safety behaviors for application in their everyday work environment. CTT gives staff tools to speak up and communicate concerns, building psychological safety in their teams and avoiding harmful outcomes. NF/SGVHS is committed to getting 100% of our staff through CTT.

During the coming year, we will be working to get teams through this course so we can not only learn the tools, but be able to implement them in our areas.

DAVID ISAACKS, FACHE

Executive Health System Director