Abstract

Interprofessional teamwork is recognized as a major contributing factor to safe patient care and improved patient outcomes. Healthcare professionals' attitudes impact successful teamwork. A large, not-for-profit healthcare organization in the southwestern United States conducted a new employee orientation that included content on interprofessional teamwork, and collected quality improvement data that included responses to the TeamSTEPPS® Teamwork Attitudes Questionnaire (T-TAQ). This retrospective, non-experimental, before-after, comparative study analyzed this quality improvement data to determine if there was a significant impact of the interprofessional teamwork-focused orientation on individual team member's attitudes regarding teamwork as measured by the T-TAQ. The principles of Adult Learning Theory guided this study. The results of the paired-samples t-test (N= 81) showed a significant increase in mean scores between the pre-orientation T-TAQ (M = 4.44, SD = .328) and the post-orientation T-TAQ (M = 4.64, SD = .326; t (80) = -6.35, p CI: -.262 to -.137, d =.34). Recommendations include that healthcare organizations consider: the addition of teamwork content to their new employee orientations with the goal of improving new employee attitudes regarding teamwork, utilizing the TeamSTEPPS® tools and materials provided by the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality in the education that they provide to their staff to improve the teamwork within their organizations, use of the T-TAQ to evaluate teamwork attitudes within their organization, and evaluation of attitudes regarding teamwork prior to hire of new employees.

Julie Rohr

Author Details

Julie Rohr, DNP, MSN, BSN, RN-BC, RNC-NIC, CNS

Sigma Membership

Gamma Sigma

Type

DNP Capstone Project

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Outcomes Research

Research Approach

Quantitative Research

Keywords:

Orientation, Orientation Programs, Interdisciplinary, Interdisciplinary Education, Interdisciplinary Team, Inter-Professional Learning, Inter-Professional Training, Teams

Advisor

Judy Burckhardt

Second Advisor

Karen Whitham

Degree

DNP

Degree Grantor

American Sentinel University

Degree Year

2016

Rights Holder

All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.

All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

Peer-review: Single Blind

Acquisition

Self-submission

Date of Issue

2018-03-23

Full Text of Presentation

wf_yes

Download

Share

COinS