The relationship between efficacy, teamwork, effort and patient satisfaction

A key issue for hospital patient care teams is that how well they function impacts many the care giving process. A few of the known problems with health care teams are the duplication of effort, insufficient use of multidisciplinary teams to deliver care, and fragmentation in care delivery processes (CQHCA, 2001). A teamwork assessment tool may help to predict team development needs more accurately especially when linked with self and collective efficacy, and individual and collective effort.; This purpose of this study was to explore the influence of self and collective-efficacy, teamwork, and individual and collective effort on patient satisfaction. An additional purpose was to provide reliability and validity information on a composite of measurement instruments. In Study 1, 149 registered nurses completed the Health Care Teams Questionnaire from a Childrens Hospital in Southern Australia. In Study 2, 123 individuals comprising 28 teams completed the Health Care Teams Questionnaire from a Childrens Hospital in Southern California.; The results for both Study 1 and the Study 2 showed that self and collective efficacy, teamwork skills and individual and collective effort were all significantly positively related. Study 2 showed that there were no significant differences amongst and between units for patient satisfaction with care, self and collective efficacy, teamwork and individual and collective effort. Differences were found however by shift. Analysis of variance showed significant differences between dayshift and night shift in self-efficacy and teamwork relationships between patient satisfaction and self-efficacy and patient satisfaction and teamwork skills.; There are several implications for practice. First, highly performing patient care teams are essential to have positive patient care outcomes (COQHC, 2001). Second, nurses are limited resource and staff must perform to their full scope with a moderate amount role overlap between other care providers e.g. Licensed Vocational Nurse or Patient Care Service Aide (Dreachslin et al., 1999). Third, poorly functioning health teams are a liability to consumers of healthcare and organizations. The Healthcare Teams Questionnaire provides a inclusive set of measures that is cost effective and increases the ability accurately assess team development needs (Salas & Cannon-Bowers, 2000).