Multi-Team Shared Expectations Tool (MT-SET): An Exercise to Improve Teamwork Across Health Care Teams

Jill A. Marsteller, Michael A. Rosen, Rhonda Wyskiel, Bickey H. Chang, Yea Jen Hsu, David A. Thompson, George Kim, Kathleen Speck, Mayowa Ijagbemi, Shu Huang, Ayse P. Gurses

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Care transitions among high-intensity units caring for patients with complex needs are a critical yet undeveloped area of patient safety research. In addition, effective communication and coordination across disciplines remain elusive. This study introduces and tests the Multi-Team Shared Expectations Tool (MT-SET), an exercise that aims to engage health care teams in eliciting needs and establishing agreed-upon expectations teams and individuals within a multi-team system have of one another. We piloted the exercise within hospital-based workflows for oncology inpatients and later adopted it to elicit data on mutual needs and expectations of teams across units involved in patient transitions in two patient safety projects. Our studies demonstrated that the exercise identified common cross-unit coordination problems of delays in care, unwanted variations in care, and lack of standardized communication among units. It also revealed mismatched prioritization of each of these problems between specific unit types. The participants reported that the MT-SET helped establish positive relationships for building better cross-unit and cross-disciplinary teamwork and coordination. There is a need for systematic approaches to understand and facilitate cross-unit communication and coordination in care delivery and transitions. Future studies should broaden the application of the exercise to additional types of multi-unit and multidisciplinary teams and observe intervention ideas generated from the exercise, as well as their implementation.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)737-744
Number of pages8
JournalJoint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety
Volume50
Issue number10
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 2024

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Leadership and Management

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