Team safety and innovation by learning from errors in long-term care settings

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Management
• Organizational Psychology
• Patient Safety

Background:

• Team safety and innovation are critical yet underexplored in long-term care settings.
• Effective error management is essential for understanding team dynamics and performance.
• Team managers play a vital role in shaping team error orientation and managing membership changes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how team member stability, team coaching, and team error orientation influence team safety and innovation.
• To analyze the relationship between different error management approaches (problem-solving vs. blaming) and team outcomes.
• To understand the impact of managerial coaching on team dynamics in long-term care.

Main Methods:

• A cross-sectional survey was conducted in two long-term care organizations.
• Data were collected from 933 respondents across 152 teams, including team members and managers.
• Surveys measured team safety, innovation, member stability, team coaching, and error orientation (problem-solving and blaming).

Main Results:

• Stable teams and those with coaching managers favored a problem-solving approach to errors over blaming.
• Both error orientations impacted team member-rated safety and innovation; blaming negatively affected manager-rated innovation.
• Team coaching positively correlated with innovation, particularly in less stable teams.

Conclusions:

• Long-term care organizations should foster a problem-solving error approach and discourage blaming to boost safety and innovation.
• Team managers can significantly improve safety and innovation by coaching employees to view errors as learning opportunities and by preventing blame.
• Implementing supportive management practices is crucial for enhancing team performance and patient care in long-term settings.