Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to R L Routhieaux.
This article outlines specific suggestions for team members designed to help ensure that team membership is a satisfying experience. The suggestions offered provide clear guidelines for the responsibilities individual health care providers must assume when working on teams. Your proactive engagement in addressing the suggestions provided is part of an integrated, holistic approach to teams.
It appears that the majority of hospitals and other health care organizations use facilitators in team development. While some organizations use facilitators more extensively than others, facilitators appear to serve pivotal roles for teamwork in most health care organizations. A review of the literature, however, suggests that there is no clear consensus regarding the best way to use facilitators. This lack of consensus is, in part, due to the lack of clear best-practice guidelines for utilizing facilitators in health care. The purpose of this article is to provide such guidelines.
The purpose of this study was to identify factors at organizational, team, and individual levels that are most predictive of quality improvement team effectiveness. Numerous studies have been conducted on the use of teams in health care. The majority of these studies have focused on organizational-level issues. A few others have focused on team-level issues or individual-level issues. The authors believe that successful use of teams requires a more integrated approach. This study addresses this need by providing a multiple-level analysis of teams in three hospitals. Structured interviews were conducted with hospital administrators as well as quality improvement representatives and team leaders, and written questionnaires were administered to team members. Eight factors were related significantly to the effectiveness of team effort: frequency of team meetings, hours per week conducting team activities, willingness of members to serve on team, selection method of team members, communication of team plans, team member position/composition, team leader performance, and facilitator performance.
This study investigated the impact of music on visitors in a hospital surgery/intensive care unit waiting room. The researchers controlled the presence/absence of music in the waiting area. Visitors' stress levels and perceptions of customer service were assessed through a questionnaire handed out by hospital volunteers. Results indicated that music reduced self-reported stress levels and that visitor stress levels were inversely related to perceptions of customer service. The implications of these findings for supervisors and other health care personnel are discussed.