Worldwide News: John A. Hartford Foundation, Inc. geriatric team training initiative
On April 10-12, 1997, the John A. Hartford Foundation sponsored a kick-off meeting for the implementation phase of its new US initiative in geriatric interdisciplinary team training (GITT).
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National Academies of Practice annual conference report- Interprofessional approaches to the prevention of health care errors
This report summarizes the National Academies of Practice annual meeting, convened in cooperation with the Interdisciplinary Health Care Team Conference, on April 13, 2002 in Washington, D.C.
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Keeping patients safe: Transforming the work environment of nurses
Keeping Patients Safe: Transforming the Work Environment of Nurses identifies solutions to problems in hospital, nursing home, and other health care organization work environments that threaten patient safety through their effect on nursing care.
A companion to the Institute of Medicine's earlier patient safety report, To Err is Human, the report puts forth a blueprint of actions that all health care organizations which rely on nurses should take.
Informal roles and the stages of interdisciplinary team development
After presenting a theory of team development, we propose that the informal role structure of a team is dependent upon the degree of anomie in the team culture, and we provide measures of anomie and informal roles that can be used in field settings. Then we test hypotheses on a national sample of 111 interdisciplinary health care teams in geriatrics in US Veterans Affairs medical centers. We find evidence that as teams develop from early to later stages, the interpersonal behavior of members becomes less differentiated on three dimensions: prominence, sociability, and task-orientation.
Collaboration improves the quality of care: Methodological challenges and evidence from US health care research
At the present time when interprofessional collaboration in practice is reaching new levels of interest related to health care system changes in both the UK and the US, a key question being raised is: What are the outcomes and costs of interprofessional collaborative models of care?
End-of-life decisions in adult intensive care: Current research base and directions for the future
The current research knowledge base for end-of-life decision making in adult intensive care units is reviewed. Proposals for future research needs and for practice are described.
Please note: The full text of this article is only available to those with subscription access to the journal Nursing Outlook. Contact your institutional library or the publisher for details.
Development of an Attitudes Toward Health Care Teams Scale
The authors describe the development and psychometric testing across three study phases of an Attitudes Toward Health Care Teams Scale. The measure contains two subscales: Quality of Care/Process (14 items) and Physician Centrality (6 items). The Quality of Care/Process subscale measures team members' perceptions of the quality of care delivered by health care teams and the quality of teamwork to accomplish this. The Physician Centrality subscale measures team members' attitudes toward physicians' authority in teams and their control over information about patients.
USA: Focus on interprofessional practice, education, and research
This article provides an overview of major interprofessional health care, education and research initiatives in the USA in the past fifty years, beginning with a short introduction that places the discussion into a conceptual and historical perspective and ending with some considerations for the future of interprofessional care in the USA.
Group think theory and research: Implications for decision making in geriatric health care teams
The team approach to geriatric care does not automatically result in appropriate decision making with regard to elderly patients with multiple chronic problems and complicated, overlapping needs. In this article, Janis's (1972, 1982) group‐think theory and tests of facets of the theory are examined. A modified theory is then applied to geriatric health care teams using a case scenario. Suggestions for minimizing the conditions that lead to groupthink and the resultant poor decisions are made.
Conceptual and methodological problems in studying the effects of interdisciplinary geriatric teams
Despite the frequent claims of the superiority of interdisciplinary teams over more usual care patterns, systematic studies of the effectiveness of geriatric interdisciplinary teams are rare. Illustrated by a review of recent studies are the difficult conceptual and methodological problems encountered by investigators. Such problems include those of basic research design, construct validity, populations targeted, and outcomes measured. Finally, future research directions are suggested.