Improving hospital care and collaborative communications for the 21st century: Key recommendations for general internal medicine
BACKGROUND: Communication and collaboration failures can have negative impacts on the efficiency of both individual clinicians and health care system delivery as well as on the quality of patient care. Recognizing the problems associated with clinical and collaboration communication, health care professionals and organizations alike have begun to look at alternative communication technologies to address some of these inefficiencies and to improve interprofessional collaboration.
Interprofessional communication with hospitalist and consultant physicians in general internal medicine: A qualitative study
BACKGROUND: Studies in General Internal Medicine [GIM] settings have shown that optimizing interprofessional communication is important, yet complex and challenging. While the physician is integral to interprofessional work in GIM there are often communication barriers in place that impact perceptions and experiences with the quality and quantity of their communication with other team members.
An evaluation of the use of smartphones to communicate between clinicians: A mixed-methods study
BACKGROUND: Communication between clinicians is critical to providing quality patient care but is often hampered by limitations of current systems. Smartphones such as BlackBerrys may improve communication, but studies of these technologies have been limited to date.
OBJECTIVE: Our objectives were to describe how smartphones were adopted for clinical communication within general internal medical wards and determine their impact on team effectiveness and communication.
Assessment of interprofessional learning: The design of an interprofessional objective structured clinical examination (iOSCE) approach
Despite the broad adoption of IPE across a number of educational institutions, in general, there continues to be little focus on the development and implementation of sound assessment strategies.
Interprofessional primary care protocols: A strategy to promote an evidence-based approach to teamwork and the delivery of care
Primary care reform involving interprofessional team-based care is a global phenomenon. In Ontario, Canada, 150 Family Health Teams (FHTs) have been approved in the past few years. The transition to a FHT is complex involving many changes and the processes for collaborative teamwork are not clearly delineated. To support the transition to team-based care in FHTs, a project was undertaken to develop and implement a series of interprofessional protocols in four clinical areas.
Leadership of interprofessional health and social care teams: A socio-historical analysis
AIM: The aim of this paper is to explore some of the key socio-historical issues related to the leadership of interprofessional teams.
BACKGROUND: Over the past quarter of a century, there have been repeated calls for collaboration to help improve the delivery of care. Interprofessional teamwork is regarded as a key approach to delivering high-quality, safe care.
Interprofessional interaction, negotiation and non-negotiation on general internal medicine wards
Research suggests that health care can be improved and patient harm reduced when health professionals successfully collaborate across professional boundaries. Consequently, there is growing support for interprofessional collaboration in health and social care, both nationally and internationally. Factors including professional hierarchies, discipline-specific patterns of socialization, and insufficient time for teambuilding can undermine efforts to improve collaboration.
An introduction to teamwork: Findings from an evaluation of an interprofessional education experience for 1000 first-year health science students
Effective interprofessional collaboration is an important factor in addressing health care needs and priorities. Educators and health care practitioners have argued that interprofessional education (IPE) is necessary to equip students with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors to work collaboratively and ultimately deliver enhanced patient/client care. The University of Toronto has implemented an introductory IPE session for approximately 1000 health science students that focuses on teamwork.
Communication channels in general internal medicine: A description of baseline patterns for improved interprofessional collaboration
General internal medicine (GIM) is a communicatively complex specialty because of its diverse patient population and the number and diversity of health care providers working on a medicine ward. Effective interprofessional communication in such information-intensive environments is critical to achieving optimal patient care. Few empirical studies have explored the ways in which health professionals exchange patient information and the implications of their chosen communication forms.
Stressful intensive care unit medical crises: How individual responses impact on team performance
BACKGROUND: Intensive care units (ICUs) are recognized as stressful environments. However, the conditions in which stressors may affect health professionals' performance and well-being and the conditions that potentially lead to impaired performance and staff psychological distress are not well understood.
OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to determine healthcare professionals' perceptions regarding the factors that lead to stress responses and performance impairments during ICU medical crises.