What Does Successfully Supported Healthcare Team Look Like?
Teamwork in healthcare is as important as clinical experience. High functioning teams anywhere can accomplish more quickly, but particularly in healthcare, where so much depends on effective communication. Management of effective healthcare teams requires effort. But what does a successfully supported healthcare team look like? We have answers.
The Unmistakable Signs of Healthcare Team Effectiveness
If employees do not come together into a fully functioning team, deadlines can be missed, and conflicts can arise. In healthcare, these situations can have a negative effect on patient satisfaction and outcomes. Conversely, a strong team is the mark of a high-performing organization.
Successful healthcare teams possess some of these qualities:
- Communication is effective and open. Communication is key to team collaboration. Sharing thoughts and ideas is as important as sharing tasks. Poor communication means that conflicts are inevitable between team members. Whether clinical or administrative, healthcare managers can support open team communication by modeling appropriate behaviors that facilitate smooth collaboration.
- Goal-oriented teams understand their mission and exist within a culture of accountability with clear metrics and tasks. There is much in healthcare that lends itself to this kind of task-oriented environment. But beyond a patient crisis or rounding or the myriad other tasks associated with caring for a patient or running a busy healthcare facility, there are also team goals driving success. Managers must work with their teams to establish individual and group metrics. This will naturally pull teams together to work on a collective goal.
- Everyone contributes a fair share toward the goal. Organizations with everyone pointed in the same direction and rowing together will naturally get where they’re headed more quickly than their less organized competitors. Good managers know this and help their teams by ensuring everyone understands their responsibilities and the ramifications of not fulfilling them. This naturally creates a sense of team camaraderie and increases engagement in the tasks at hand.
- The best healthcare teams support each other. This has been particularly important during the COVID-19 crisis. The best teams leaned on each other during what has been a very stressful time. Managers that help teams by supporting their efforts to take care of each other are rewarded by the best performing, fully functional healthcare teams. By providing resources to support their teams, managers also can support the organization with fully functioning, effective employee teams.
- Diverse teams are the best teams. Every unique person on a diverse team adds strength to the team, and good managers know this. Team diversity brings together people who have different skills. The best healthcare managers know this and capitalize on the strengths of their teams while shoring up any weaknesses. Creativity and innovation flourish on any team when the makeup includes a diverse mix of people.
- Great healthcare teams also know when to have fun. It should never be all work and stress; knowing when to take time to enjoy the job and each other is the mark of the best performing teams. Taking time to laugh and share jokes, and even to socialize after hours, means that team bonding can occur that can only improve the functioning of the team. Managers can set the tone and help teams bond together.
The Custom Group of Companies specialize in creating these types of fully functioning teams. Talk with our team today about how we can help.
