Improving Healthcare Team Communication

Communications research in aviation is widely regarded by many in the healthcare community as the 'gold standard' to emulate. Yet healthcare and aviation differ in many ways, as do the vital communications shared among members of clinical teams. Aviation team communication should, then, be understood in terms of what lessons will benefit those who work in healthcare. In Improving Healthcare Team Communication, renowned experts provide insights from 'sharp end' operator research in high-hazard sectors that shed light on the performance of cognitive tasks including resource availability assessment, allocation, anticipation, prediction, trade-off decisions, speculation and negotiation. The book reports on recent field research to address what is known, and what needs to be learned, about team communication among operators. Students, clinicians and healthcare managers can find answers in it to the questions they face daily. How can healthcare information be better shared? What can we expect from its improvement, and how do we get there? Lessons learned from team communication research and experience in aviation and healthcare will point the way to improved patient safety.

Christopher P. Nemeth, Ph.D., CHFP, is a Research Associate (Assistant Professor) in the Cognitive Technologies Laboratory in the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care at The University of Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Contents: Foreword; Preface; The context for improving healthcare team communication, Christopher P. Nemeth; The social construction of healthcare teams, Eric M. Eisenberg. Part 1 Sources of Team Communication: Improving healthcare communication: lessons from the flightdeck, Judith Orasanu and Ute Fischer; Crew resource management (CRM) in the aviation industry, David M. Musson. Part 2 Advances in Team Communication: Safety event reporting systems: problem detection in distributed systems, Charles E. Billings, Philip J. Smith and Amy L. Spencer; Voice loops: engineering overhearing to aid coordination, Emily S. Patterson, Jennifer Watts-Perotti and David D. Woods; Building shared situation awareness in healthcare settings, Melanie C. Wright and Mica R. Endsley. Part 3 Healthcare Team Communication in the Field: Factors affecting team communication in the intensive care unit (ICU), Thomas Reader, Rhona Flin and Brian Cuthbertson; Between shifts: healthcare communication in the PICU, Christopher P. Nemeth, Julie Kowalsky, Marianne Brandwijk, Madelyn Kanaha, P. Alan Klock and Richard I. Cook; Collaborative cross-checking, Jeffrey P. Brown; Maintaining common ground: an analysis of cooperative communication in the operating room, Leila Johannesen. Part 4 Future Trends: Communication as a sign of adaptation in socio-technical systems: the case of robotic surgery, Anne-Sophie Nyssen and Adélaïde Blavier; Telehealth and healthcare team communication, Rod Elford; A healthcare team communication research agenda, Christopher P. Nemeth and Robert L. Wears; Index.