We all know that hospitals and health care facilities need to work as an interdepartmental team to treat patients. The same goes for your patient safety team. A mix of doctors, nurses, technicians, and other health care staff should be on your team and here’s why:
- Everyone has a different view of the patient and hospital processes. Nurses probably get the most direct contact with patients so their view is different from doctors, who generally spend less time with patients, and even more than technicians who have very little patient contact but may know more about the behind-the-scenes workings of a health care facility. Having different views can help ensure every angle is represented and considered.
- Everyone can contribute to goal setting. Having goals for your safety team is important for guiding your processes. With a team of diverse hospital staff, everyone can share realistic goals from their perspective. When people have a hand in creating goals, they’re more likely to carry-though and accomplish them.
- Everyone becomes transparent. Often in busy health care facilities, care providers focus only on their job, and don’t often have time to learn from other team members or take other stakeholder’s needs and perspective into consideration. When you form an interdepartmental safety team, you work very closely with other departments, learning their processes, strengths, weaknesses, and goals. It automatically creates a more collaborative environment and you can decrease preventable patient injuries because you’re working together to see the bigger picture, and not just the individual role you play.
- Everyone learns better communication skills. A successful interdepartmental patient safety team benefits not only patients, but your employees and staff as well. A safety team needs constant communication in order to be successful. By joining a team, everyone learns better communication skills because they have an outlet where it’s a required skill.
What does your patient safety team look like right now? Consider inviting representatives from across your organization to join your team and you could increase patient safety and create a more productive health care team.
And… if your next safety team meeting determines that you need more comfortable bedding or wheelchair cushions, Essential Medical Products can help you pick the right one.
