Webster County Community Hospital
Red Cloud, Nebraska
 
   

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Webster County Community Focuses on Teamwork To Ensure Safe Care for Patients
(TeamSTEPPS)

Webster County Community Hospital is working to improve staff members’ communication skills in an effort to make care even safer for all of its patients. Hospital employees recently attended a specialized team training session in Lincoln, Nebraska that was designed to improve communications among doctors, nurses, pharmacists, therapists, and administrative staff who interact on a daily basis under fast-paced conditions.

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The training, called TeamSTEPPSTM, is designed to help improve teamwork across the hospital and especially in urgent care areas such as the emergency department, operating room, and labor and delivery suites.

"Teamwork and communication are often the key factors in determining whether patients receive outstanding care or whether they don't,” said TeamSTEPPSTM trainer Katherine Jones, PT, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. “This training was designed to provide specific tools and strategies that can help hospitals improve communication within all clinical and non-clinical areas. This training builds on a previous patient safety project funded by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality from 2005 through 2007 that UNMC conducted with 24 Nebraska hospitals."

Twenty-eight hospitals across Nebraska and parts of Iowa participated in the training, reflecting a regional effort to implement this nationally recognized teamwork curriculum that was developed in 2006 by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Department of Defense.

We consider this training an investment in our staff that will improve the coordination and quality of patient care similar to our investments in technology and new construction. We would like to encourage our community to visit our website: http://www.websterhospital.org or come to the hospital and make suggestions to our core team coaches, we are eager to make our hospital the best it can be and encourage your input! Please take the time to have your voice heard!

The Institute of Medicine’s 1999 report, To Err Is Human, identified poor teamwork and faulty communication as major sources of preventable medical errors and called for interdisciplinary team training programs to promote patient safety.

For more information about the TeamSTEPPSTM program, please visit http://www.ahrq.gov/teamstepps/
Sincerely
Sheena Johnson, MT (ASCP)
QI Coordinator/Laboratory Technologist

 

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