The role of teamwork and situation awareness in patient safety

Teamwork is a critical component of creating and maintaining a culture of safety and quality in any organization. This is especially true in the fast-paced healthcare environment, where the emphasis on efficiency and productivity can make it easy for mistakes to escape our attention. This is why situation awareness is so important.
 
What is situation awareness?
Put simply, situation awareness is a constant and keen understanding of what’s happening around you. It’s the ability to perceive, prioritize, analyze and recall critical information that can help guide decisions and predict outcomes — even in an unpredictable environment.
 
Loss of situation awareness can result in confusion, lack of communication and ultimately, errors that can impact patient safety. To help strengthen your team’s situational awareness, here are seven key abilities you can work on together.

1. Think ahead: Drawing from past experiences and given what you know about the current situation, what do you expect to happen next? Are you in the right care environment? Do you have the right treatment tools? If not, how will you solve the problem?
2. Identify threats: Learn to recognize the tangible and intangible factors that may pose a risk to the success of your treatment plan or service. Monitor for them continuously, and plan both an offensive and a defensive strategy.
3. Trust your gut: If something tells you things are not right, listen. Be suspicious, verify your perceptions, then respond.
4. Minimize task overload: Trying to care for one patient as you cope with an emergency for another is often a formula for failure. Prioritize your workload and do one thing at a time.
5. Be aware of fatigue: Adjust your work routines and other obligations to ensure you get adequate sleep and time for self-care.
6. Avoid complacency: Hope for the best but always prepare for the worst.
7. Reassess constantly: Whether it’s a surge in patients, staffing issues or equipment failure, quickly changing circumstances are a given in health care. Reassess the situation regularly and be prepared to adjust appropriately to sudden developments.

Yes, there is an “I” in Team
A team does have an “I” in it, and that “I” is you. You are vital to the team. Simply calling a group of people a team does not make them one — each individual must commit to working together toward a common goal. And when each team member possesses a strong sense of situation awareness, the chances for success increase dramatically.