Teamwork: The Strongest Virtue in Hospice

Abstract

Problem Statement: Teamwork within the end-of-life care team is vital to a patient experiencing a peaceful death. Limited information exists to help organizational leadership assess teamwork within this specialty. Purpose: Teamwork: The Strongest Virtue in Hospice aims to provide organizational leadership with a method to assess teamwork within the end-of-life care specialty. Methods: Quantitative information was gathered from surveying 70 end-of-life care nurses using the Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS) Teamwork Perception Questionnaire (T-TPQ) (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ] 2010). Data collection occurred over six weeks and included demographic information on the primary work setting, time working as a nurse, and time working in the end-of-life care specialty. Descriptive statistics with the calculation of the central tendency of each of the five components in the T-TPQ survey and T-score analysis are used to analyze the results. Inclusion Criteria: Registered and licensed practical nurses on the end-of-life care team. Exclusion criteria included having worked less than sixteen hours a week for the last four weeks before taking the survey. Results: The T-TPQ survey is a valuable tool to assess teamwork within the end-of-life care specialty team. The end-of-life care team agrees that teamwork within the team is adequate to meet patient needs, rating leadership and mutual support stronger than situational monitoring and communication. Conclusion: This research provides organizational leadership with valuable information on the assessment of an end-of-life care team and a pathway to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the team.

Disciplines

Medicine and Health Sciences | Nursing

First Advisor

Sharon Stager

Date of Award

1-1-2022

Document Type

Dissertation

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