Teambuilding across healthcare professions: the ELDER project

Area of Science:

• Geriatric Medicine
• Healthcare Education
• Teamwork and Communication

Background:

• Quality care for older adults relies on effective collaboration among nursing and interprofessional healthcare providers.
• Interprofessional collaboration is crucial for optimizing patient outcomes in geriatric settings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To enhance communication and teamwork among interprofessional healthcare providers (HCPs).
• To implement innovative teambuilding activities over a three-year period to foster collaboration.

Main Methods:

• 97 multi-disciplinary HCPs from five long-term or home care agencies participated.
• Six interactive sessions utilized role-playing, case studies, games, and exercises for teambuilding.
• The Geriatric Interdisciplinary Team Training (GITT) instrument and Interdisciplinary Teamwork IQ test measured changes.

Main Results:

• No significant changes were observed in GITT scores (pre: 71%, post: 73.3%, p=.39) or Teamwork IQ scores.
• Qualitative data indicated that teambuilding exercises were beneficial in practice.
• Participants reported a better understanding of various healthcare provider roles.

Conclusions:

• Educational opportunities for diverse healthcare disciplines to train together are infrequent.
• The interprofessional small group methodology is a replicable model for improving communication and teamwork skills.
• This approach has the potential to address existing barriers in interprofessional collaboration.