Healthcare Efficiency and Teamwork

This assignment delves into the crucial relationship between healthcare efficiency, team effectiveness, and patient care quality. It examines various factors influencing these aspects, including leadership styles, communication methods, and the application of lean principles in healthcare settings. The analysis emphasizes the significance of fostering a collaborative and supportive work environment to enhance teamwork and ultimately deliver superior patient outcomes. Strategies for improving teamwork and promoting efficiency are discussed, highlighting their contribution to safer and more effective healthcare delivery.

BUS6004 Quality Management in a Care Setting
Draft

Executive Summary
To ensure effective patient care and safety, teamwork is very essential to achieve better
outcomes. The requirement of successful teamwork is growing due to the increasing co-
morbidities and the increasing intricacy of care specialisation. Healthcare institutes can
choose many well-developed programs and strategies for CQI to achieve the required quality
and receive expanded results.
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Table of Contents
Question 1..................................................................................................................................4
With reference to specific team development theories of choice, critically discuss the role and
performance of teams in maintaining systems and structures designed to promote rights,
responsibilities and diversity of service users in healthcare practice.........................................4
Question 2..................................................................................................................................7
Critically appraise the use of two Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) tools used in
managing quality care and improving outcomes for service users (outcome-based care).........7
References................................................................................................................................11
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Question 1
With reference to specific team development theories of choice, critically discuss the
role and performance of teams in maintaining systems and structures designed to
promote rights, responsibilities and diversity of service users in healthcare practice
In the provision of healthcare, effective teamwork might be positively and immediately affect
patient outcome and safety. The necessity for an effective team is rising because of the
increasing co-morbidities and the increasing intricacy of care specialisation (Stanhope and
Lancaster, 2019). Time has gone when the healthcare practitioner or the doctor in healthcare
centre might be capable to exclusively deliver the care of quality which satisfies the patient
(Chouinard et al., 2017). Evolution in health care and the global demand for the quality is of
crucial need the parallel professional of healthcare development with a higher emphasis on
the approach of patient-centred teamwork.
It might be attained by placing the patient in the care centre and through sharing the broad-
based culture of principles and values. It will assist developing and forming the effective
team must be capable to deliver the extraordinary care to the patients. Aim to this objective,
team member’s motivation must be backed up the practical skills and strategies to attain the
goals and overcome challenges(Chouinard et al., 2017). However, the role of effective
teamwork is globally recognised important in maintaining structures and system intended to
promote the responsibilities, rights and the diversity of service users in the practice of
healthcare.
This section critically discusses the role of the healthcare team by using Tuckman’s model to
promote rights, responsibilities and diversity of service users in healthcare practice. Building
an effective team is important for making an adequate environment in an organisation. Thus,
Tuckman has described the five major stages of team development such as Forming,
Storming, Norming, Performing and Adjourning (Jones, 2019).
In the first stage of the Tuckman model members of team assess their place in the group
along with the rules and procedures of the team. The most vital thing about this stage is to
ensure those team goals are clear and norms to be specified by all the members. Similarly, in
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this stage, the goals and objective of the healthcare team to maintain systems and structures
intended to promote responsibilities, diversity and rights of the users are discussed to clear
the path of the team (Sinha, 2017). This stage is when the people group come together for the
first time to attain a shared goal. Information is also shared about their interest, experience
and backgrounds. However, clear direction is set in this stage.
In the second stage that is storming; members at this stage have the resistance at a higher
level. It is the stage where the commencement of query of objectives task, challenge
processes and the leadership occurs. In addition, there might be some friction amongst the
team members but openness and honesty might be brought in this stage with efficient
leadership and managing diverse views and conflicts as well as build trust among its
members(Sinha, 2017). While working with the diverse people in a team to maintain and
structures designed, disagreement about the direction and gaols happens. Conflicts over the
structure, authority and leadership might surface and it leads to the strained relationship.
However, as the team progresses through this stage, with the direction of team leader, the
team learn how to solve issues and helps to promote the rights, responsibilities and diversity
of service users (Chouinard et al., 2017).
In this Norming stage, the team discovers the new ways to work collectively and setting the
norms, increase cohesiveness and optimistic cooperation in the members. In the following,
stage conflicts get resolute when team members are enabled to express their opinions and
views in a group without restrictions (Sinha, 2017). In this stage, the team start to work
towards the goal of the team which is to promote the diversity and rights of service users and
start to trust each other. Moreover, they also experience the belonging sense and make vital
progress to the goals of the team.
This fourth stage develops the efficiency in attaining goals and to see the accomplishment of
carrying out joint work. The members of the team become comfortable with each other and
with higher flexibility. Regular meetings and reviews at this stage make the team more
thoughtful and emphasised on attaining goals (Sinha, 2017). On the other hand, this stage is
not reached by all teams but when the team reaches they perform at the peak stage. It is also
the possibility that the member of the team can revert back to the forming or storming stage if
the member of the team starts working self-sufficiently.
Adjourning is the final stage, after successful completion of the task of the team, the member
might bring the closure sense and bonding among members. Most of the experts in the
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development of team agree that teams go through all; these five stages but how fast team will
move through each stage will depend upon the members of the team, their skills, the work
and the leadership type available to them (Rosen et al., 2018). Once the efficient team has
been developed by passing through each stage it is easier for the team to attain the objectives
quickly. Therefore, in the health and care, it is important for the managers and leader to
employ this model of Tuckman to ensure that which stage their team and helping the team to
acknowledge and process the unavoidable conflicts as well as changes during the group
development(Stanhope and Lancaster, 2019).
In health care practice, everyone must have equal access to the care and support they require
irrespective of their situations. The team have the accountability to promote the diversity and
equality across all the areas of their work and delivering service which is fair, diverse and
personalised(Stanhope and Lancaster, 2019). Diversity and equality are the major
components in the provision of services of quality care. Good practice must mean promoting
and encouraging these values anywhere likely by the help of team development models. The
team must ensure that by their work, users are equally and fairly treated with respect and
dignity (Rosen et al., 2018). Diversity and equity must be the integral service planning part.
Team-based healthcare is the health services provided to families, individuals and their
communities by minimum two health providers who work collaboratively with the caregivers
and patients to the level preferred by each patient to attain shared goals in and across setting
to attain high-quality and coordinated care (Metcalfe et al., 2017). The integration of sharing
responsibilities with the responsibility among members of the team in healthcare system
offers a higher benefit. In practice, shared accountability deprived of high-quality teamwork
might result in the instant risks for patients. For instance, poor communication among
healthcare professional, caregivers and patients has emerged as the common rationale for
patients taking the legal actions against the providers of health-care(Thompson, 2017). They
appreciate and respect the role of each other as well as they also respect the beliefs and talent
of each other, as well as their professional contributions. However, effective teams might also
encourage and accept the opinion’s diversity among team members.
Developing effective teamwork is a critical part of improving quality of care. Here we
present basic team management strategies and tools.4. Belbin’s team roles – include
additional ways to categorize individual personalities: innovator, resource investigator,
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coordinator, shaper, monitor/evaluator, team worker, implementer, completer/finisher, and
specialist (Rojhani, 2016).
In offering the best service in the facility of healthcare; there is the high necessity to have in
place the effective and efficient teamwork which might always be in a suitable position to
address different circumstances and health complications. Each team requires access to each
of the Belbin Team Role behaviours to become the high performing team. But, it does not
mean that each team requires nine individual; the most individual will have only two or three
roles of Belbin which they are most relaxed with and it might be changed over the time.
Belbin recommended that consideration of team role in the specific team, everyone might
progress their strengths and manage their faintness as the teammate might improve the way
that she/he contributes to the team effectiveness. Belbin also describes the team role as the
tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way. However, there
are three action-oriented roles such as completer finisher, implementer and shaper, three
individual-oriented roles, resource investigator, team worker and coordinator and three
cerebral roles such as specialist, monitor evaluator and plant (van Dierendonck and Groen,
2011).
It is argued that effective teams share the purpose, clear respect and understanding of the
roles and responsibilities of the team member for the result. It has been analysed that
focusing on the absence or presence of such characteristics represented the oversimplification
of the method in health professional work. They also argued that due to the changing nature
and complexity of the contemporary health services as well as interprofessional relationships
such characteristic’s list did not take the adequate account of the social, professional, political
and health context which had the important bearing on the methods in which individual
health care and professional teams developed as well as operating at the local level (van
Dierendonck and Groen, 2011).
Question 2
Critically appraise the use of two Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) tools used in
managing quality care and improving outcomes for service users (outcome-based care)
CQI (continuous quality improvement) is the on-going process of reducing waste, achieving
operational efficiency, increasing the satisfaction of internal and external stakeholders.
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Therefore, CQI is used in healthcare to improve the care and services continuously using
different tools to plan a course of action and implement it.
Healthcare organisations can select many well-developed programs and strategies for CQI to
accomplish the required quality and receive expanded outcomes (Aladin, Kuntjoro and
Lestari, 2019). Below are two examples of CQI tools which can be used:
The Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Model for Improvement
This CQI model is a simple approach that a number of healthcare organisations use to
accelerate their enhancement approaches. This model focuses on setting objectives and team
building to accomplish change (Polancich, 2017). This model looks for solutions by
considering three questions:
 What is the organisation trying to achieve?
 How will an organisation find out that a change is an enhancement?
 What changes can be made by the company to accomplish improvement and
advancement?
Principle: To solve these questions, the initiative of Continuous Quality Improvement makes
use of a PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) cycle to experiment with the suggested change or CQI
initiative in the real work environment so that changes are quickly reinforced and dispersed.
This process includes a few steps which are:
Build the team: Involving the correct people on the process enhancement team is essential
for an effective effort. The organisation should determine the size and the members of the
team. Practice staff personnel is the expert at what works effectively within the healthcare
activities and which areas need improvement.
Set goals: The question of what the organisation want to accomplish is answered in this step.
Aims and objectives must be explicit, have a specified time period, and be assessable. They
should likewise involve a definition of all the parties that will be influenced such as staff
members, service users, patients etc (Welch, 2015).
Build measures: The concern of how the organisation will know if the particular change is
advancement is answered in this step. Outcome measures must be known to assess if the
objectives are met. Practices must choose measures using information they have gathered.
Select changes: The type of changes that the company should make are made obvious in this
step. The teams and staffs should take into account multiple sources for ideas and pick
changes that are needed the most (Aladin, Kuntjoro and Lestari, 2019).
Examine changes: Initially, the changes should be calculated and downstream influences
analysed to evaluate if they had the required output or outcome. When the changes are
reinforced, the outcomes should be monitored so that best practices and lessons learned can
be utilised to bring upcoming changes (Welch, 2015).
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Reinforce changes: After examining a change on a small scare, experiencing from the test,
and filtering the change via many cycles of PDSA, the staffs might reinforce a change in a
wider scale such as an entire department or a pilot population.
Spread changes: After effective reinforcement of the required change for an entire unit or a
pilot population, the staffs can distribute the changes to other organisational units (Parry,
2015).
Using this CQI tool, the multi-disciplinary teams could bring improvements in staff
performance, services and care provision. Multi-disciplinary working involves different
agencies and local authorities working to fulfil the person-centred needs of a client. In pursuit
of well-integrated care, the team has to agree on certain ways of working, shared funding and
personalising the experience for the service user (Radnor et al., 2014). To achieve this
objective, PDCA could be used to improve and manage the quality of care. The steps
involved in the four-phased tool inform the way PDCA could be used to identify any problem
in care provision or an area of improvement and bring change with the help of the whole
team.
For example, PDCA was used to collect client satisfaction data. A survey was planned to
gather the data. The survey was conducted at checkout and the staff member sitting on the
checkout desk was responsible for encouraging clients or service users to respond to the
survey (Taylor, McNicholas and Nicolay, 2014). The survey was taken at home since many
patients had papers at checkout. Only a few surveys were returned which informed the team
that patients did not wish to be burdened with taking surveys. As a result, the team decided to
conduct the survey on-site in waiting areas. Using the PDCA cycle allowed the team to
improve their actions in getting patient’s feedback (Radnor et al., 2014).
Another CQI tool is Pareto analysis which is basically called 80/20 rule in that data is
categorised in a manner that a team could recognise the processes affecting more on the care
or service quality. By following 80/20 rule, the team could identify the 20 per cent of the
processes that have 80 per cent impact on the overall care. The Pareto analysis states help in
focusing on critical resources that may be small in proportion but have a major impact on
business operations (Radnor et al., 2014).
Using Pareto analysis, the team could visualise critical activities and tasks that impact mostly
on the outcome or quality of the care. For instance, during interviews with staff members
regarding low uptake of home dialysis, all the causes were checked off. After collecting the
data, the team identified causes that accounted for 20 per cent of the overall processes but had
80 per cent impact (Cantor and Poh, 2018). This technique enabled the team to improve the
ability of the team to shortlist most important causes impacting home dialysis and reduce
them to improve quality.
Using either of the CQI techniques, the purpose of a team is to reduce variations in diagnosis
and treatment of different diseases for different patients. This approach is called outcome-
based care because it uses accurate treatment for each client. In this regard, outcome-based
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care is patient-centred care as it considers each patient’s needs, values and concerns in care
provision (Cantor and Poh, 2018).
The Pareto analysis helps in increasing positive outcomes for patients because it breaks the
bigger problems on hand into more relevant smaller problems. This way the team could
identify significant issues as well as the needs of patients to provide outcome-based care to
them (Radnor et al., 2014). However, it must be considered that the team may not identify
accurate factors in care provision which may alter the outcomes for the client.
On the other hand, PDCA is an effective technique in improving care and increasing positive
outcomes for the patient given that all the steps are followed. The reason is that it is a
systematic cyclical tool which informs the team regarding areas of improvement. However, it
requires commitment from the team in bringing change (Cantor and Poh, 2018). In order to
do so, each member should be involved because many staff members resist change which
will eventually impact the outcomes for the patients. Therefore, the role of the team is to
increase positive outcomes for each patient by aligning the care as per the needs of the
service user. At the same time, the team should strive for improving quality using CQI tools
because these empower the team to identify issues that need immediate attention and cut
repetitive tasks (Radnor et al., 2014).
Q3
It cannot be denied that each patient has distinct needs which mean the role of health and
social care settings is to attend to those diverse needs. In this regard, the health and social
care system should have all the facilities. Based on the expectancy theory, each patient would
share information and communicate openly if he or she believes that they are being helped
and the outcome is of high value to them (Cantor and Poh, 2018).
Using PDCA or Pareto analysis, the team could identify what are the needs of patients and
assess their care quality. If there is a between both, the team could improve the processes or
care provision to align the level of care quality with the diverse needs of patients. This is also
the objective of patient-centred care i.e. to increase positive outcomes for each client as per
their distinct needs (Santana, Manalili, Jolley and Zelinsky, 2018).
However, positive outcomes cannot be achieved if the team is demotivated. The motivation
theories also indicate that in order to engage team members in improving care quality, their
needs should also be addressed. By addressing their needs, team’s involved in providing
accurate care leads to satisfied service users. They consider values, needs, cultural differences
and treatment needs of each patient (Cantor and Poh, 2018).
The role of social care settings is to improve the quality of life of service users whereas
healthcare providers address the primary care needs of the clients. The combination of them
together with local authorities and governments leads to person-centred care which is
personalised and customised for each patient (Santana, Manalili, Jolley and Zelinsky, 2018).
The quality benchmarks or key performance indicators could also be used by the team to
evaluate their periodic or annual performance. For instance, waiting times determine the
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efficiency of the care. it also helps the team in identifying staff shortage and the need to
recruit more staff to ensure that the quality of care is not compromised (Santana, Manalili,
Jolley and Zelinsky, 2018).
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