Effective Teamwork In Healthcare: Barriers And Facilitators - An Essay.

Discussion

Teamwork is one of the crucial aspects in present competitive market environment at determines success or failure of a particular business entities. Teamwork allows businesses to increase the effectiveness of the operational process that creates positive impact on the motivation and satisfaction level of the customers (Martin & Learmonth, 2012). In healthcare sector, effective use of teamwork is more important, as it had to deal with precious life of the patients. Effective teamwork in healthcare sector can have serious impact on the safety level of the patients. For that reason, appropriate development of teams in more critical in the healthcare sector for keeping the trust level of the patients. Now, development of strong team in healthcare sector has to go through different barriers, such as lateral violence, peer pressure, poor communication and overworked on a daily basis. It induces every individual within the team to give their best for accomplishing all the team goals and objectives (Fitzgerald et al., 2013). Moreover, effective utilization of teamwork will help healthcare sector organizations to handle the complexity of the operational process in an effective way. In this essay, the focus will be on evaluating the barriers and facilitators for assessing the kind of impact it can have on the business processes. The essay will also try to highlight all the characteristics that can support effective team bonding among all the members. It will also highlight the way effective leadership and communicational style can have impact on the teamwork perspective. 

As per the article by Gopee and Galloway (2013) healthcare is an extremely complex entity that requires appropriate coordination between talented individuals. Introduction of different advance tools and technologies have increased the complexity even further. In healthcare sector, majority of the people are extremely knowledgeable and talented that often creates difficulties in keeping them in a strong team-bonding framework. A conventional nurse team is developed with licensed practiced nurse, registered nurse and unit secretaries. Now, all of them needed to provide with in-depth level of knowledge and information so that it can able to handle patients effectively (West et al., 2015). For that reason, leaders within the hospitality sector will have to deal with different threats in retaining skilled employees for long period of time. Healthcare sector individuals have to develop strong relationship with the patients that ease out the entire procedure in an effective manner. However, in induces each member within the hospital sector to give their best for the fulfilment of goals and objectives of the customers. For that reason, leaders in healthcare sector will have to focus on developing effective strategies for keeping the environment healthy and positive. As per the article by Weberg (2012), hospital sector employees have to deal with patients from different religion, cultural and value on regular basis. Therefore, it often creates barriers to both patients and employees to communicate each other, which eventually creates adverse impact on the provided quality of health service. 

As stated by Trong Tuan 2012), every care discipline in healthcare sector is extremely integral. If a specific patient requires respiratory care, the respiratory therapist focuses on implementing ordered treatment. Similarly, the entire tasks within the healthcare sector are divided as per the specialization of the employees. Therefore, healthcare sector has to recruit leaders in every specification for fulfilling all the roles and responsibilities in an effective manner. Many studies have divided the barriers of teamwork in healthcare sector in two prime categories including organizational barriers and team barriers and individual barriers. It has been assessed that many healthcare institutes faced challenges associated with the lack of appreciation and knowledge of the roles of different healthcare professionals (Chreim et al., 2013). As a result, teams does not provide required level of support to all the healthcare professionals that eventually creates adverse impact on the teamwork perspective. Moreover, healthcare institutes often have to deal with regulatory and financial constraints that enforce all the employees to deal with several types of unique challenges on a daily basis (Martin & Osterling, 2014). Hence, unlike other sectors, employees in healthcare sector had to take additional responsibilities for covering all aspect of the operational procedure.

On the other hand, Al-Sawai (2013) have highlighted the fact that lack of clearly stated and measurable purpose can also create challenges for healthcare individuals to provide proper support service to the patients. Unclear aim and objective statement increase the complexity of the healthcare operational process even further. As a result, it creates confusion within the workplace that eventually reduces the quality of the provided service. Moreover, due to uniqueness of the operations, leaders often face challenges in handling large team size. It has been assessed that all the individuals associated with the operational process perform specific roles and responsibilities. In fact, most of the time, the role of each employee is different from others (Martin & Waring, 2013). For that reason, it will become extremely difficult for the leaders to deal with all the responsibilities in an effective way. Healthcare sector has also gone through several changes in procedures. Specifically, technological advancement has transformed the way healthcare support services are provided in previous years. As a result, employees have faced challenges in dealing with new and advanced technologies. Therefore, any ineffective utilization of training and development procedures is likely to decrease the effectiveness of the operational procedure (Dotson & Nuru-Jeter, 2012). Many healthcare professionals also have complaint fluctuation level of authority, power and income among the professionals that eventually creates adverse impact on the motivational level of the employees. Moreover, it will also induce employees to work under extreme pressure, which is likely to break the team bonding among the healthcare professionals. In the present time, healthcare professionals always have variety of alternative options, which has affected the loyalty towards team in an effective way (Delmatoff & Lazarus, 2015). Moreover, healthcare professionals also have to deal with diversity in age, race, gender and caste that can create differences among the employees.  

From the illustration of different barriers, it can be mentioned that leaders will have to play a significant role in maintaining proper team spirit so that the organization can able to provide high quality support services. As described by Sims, Hewitt and Harris (2015) effective utilization of leadership focuses on ensuring alignment, direction and commitment to covering all aspect of the operational procedure. Direction ensures pride and agreement among all the employees with the organization to achieve vision and mission of the organization. Alignment refers to effective integration and coordination of work among the employees. Finally, commitment describes the extent employees are going beyond their provided target (Manafi, 2012). Appropriate leadership in healthcare focuses on enhancing the quality, safety and compassion level in a major way. It ensures all the requirements of the patients fulfilled by the employees in an effective manner. Specifically, healthcare sector employees will have to be provided with the information regarding the safety guidelines developed by different organization. Otherwise, the entire business procedure of the organizations can find severe challenges in performing all the responsibilities. Hence, leaders within the healthcare sector will have to focus on remaining supportive, available, fair, empathetic, respectful and compassionate towards the provided responsibilities. According to Fulop and Mark (2013), leadership styles is an extremely critical factor that allows healthcare organizations to utilize all the available internal sources in an appropriate way. Therefore, effective utilization of leadership styles allows healthcare organizations to perform all the responsibilities with the limited resources, which will definitely create positive impact on the revenue level of the organization.

Over the years, many studies have been conducted on leadership styles and its impact on the performance level of the team. Therefore, it highlights the fact that high quality performance of the organizations depends on the amount of support and service facilities managers provide to the employees (Kumar, 2013). For instance, leaders in healthcare sector will have to focus on providing clear idea about the vision and mission of the team to all members of the employees. It will allow all the employees to focus on enhancing their skills and knowledge in such a way so that it can able to support the aim and goal of the organization. Hence, appropriate utilization of communicational network is extremely important in healthcare sector. Therefore, leaders will have to focus on formulating effective leadership network in order to ensure all the patients receive superior quality of healthcare services. As illustrated by Mosadeghrad and Ferdosi (2013) patient’s perception regarding the quality of the provided healthcare service depends heavily on the quality of the interaction with healthcare teams. For that reason, leaders within the healthcare sector will have to focus on developing strong communicational network with the patients also for keeping the satisfaction level of the employee at optimum order. The effective utilization of communication with the patients allows healthcare organizations to feel connected with the patients mentally. As a result, it creates positive psychological impact on the patients regarding the provided quality of the services. Therefore, it helps organizations to create strong brand reputation within the market. As per outcome of recently conducted survey among 1.5 lakh patients, communication has come up as the most significant factors out of all the requirements in operational procedure (Gottlieb, Gottlieb & Shamian, 2012). For that reason, healthcare organizations will also have to focus on making necessary adjustments in the complex organizational structure in order to ensure all the patients required level of support services. Team conflict is another critical factor that can have massive impact on the effectiveness of the operational procedure. Leadership style has to focus on identifying the communication gap between patients and staffs for channelling the training process towards right direction.

As described by Nilsson and Furåker (2012) in order to strive for acquiring superior talent and skills, healthcare organizations have focused on recruiting individuals from different parts of the globe. Therefore, it induces people from different cultural and geographical background to work for the same organization collaboratively. Hence, it increases the probability of miscommunication and conflicts within the workplace. However, present globalize structure of healthcare sector has enforced organizations to recruit people from different geographical, religion and cultural background, as it helps to deal with patients from all across the world (Wang, Chontawan & Nantsupawat, 2012).  Therefore, leaders within healthcare sector will have to focus on identifying appropriate training needs in order to ensure collaboration among the employees remains at the optimum level. Moreover, leaders within the healthcare   

On the other hand, healthcare organizations will have to focus on utilizing such leadership strategy in which all the employees are provided with required level of enough space and opportunity to share their views and perspective. It will induce employees to feel an integral part of the organization, which will eventually create positive impact on the loyalty development perspective (Doody & Doody, 2012). On the other hand, leadership style needs to focus on monitoring the performance level of all the employees within the team. It will help leaders to identify training and development needs for a specific employee or a group of employee in an effective manner. Training and development are critical for successful teamwork, as it helps employees to perform all the responsibilities associated with the operational procedure in an appropriate way. As per the article by Shazali et al. (2013), many healthcare organizations have focused on adopting methodologies of hospitality sector for enhancing the provided quality of support services. Therefore, the leadership style needs to empower employees to include their own values and perspectives within the provided quality of support services. 

As described by Septimus et al. (2014) healthcare sector organizations will have to focus on developing leaders for keeping the effectiveness of the operational process. Leadership intervention also needs to focus on identifying the intervention areas appropriately, for making necessary changes in the operational procedure. For improving the quality of teamwork, leaders in healthcare sector will have to provide enough opportunity to the employees to communicate with each other. Thus, leaders will have to conduct different fun programs at idle time for ensuring team spirit remains at the optimum level (Dixon-Woods, McNicol & Martin, 2012). Leaders also have to focus on developing family programs and events for the employees to ensure effective communicational process. Moreover, leaders will also have to focus on forming campaign for the patients to provide information about different aspect of the operational procedure.  

Conclusion:

 The above illustration has highlighted the fact that leadership style plays an extremely critical role in keeping the quality of the provided service. Effective utilization of leadership styles allows healthcare organizations to cover all aspect of the operational procedure in an effective way. Moreover, it also helps organizations in keeping the satisfaction and motivation level of the respondents. Therefore, it encourages employees to give their best at the workplace, which eventually created positive impact on the quality of the operational procedure. The illustration also emphasizes on using advance communicational style and network in order to eliminate any possibility of confusion within the workplace. The essay illustrates that the leadership style of hospital sector organizations has to focus on providing proper information to both employees and patients. Otherwise, it can create adverse impact on the satisfaction level of the patients, which eventually will result in adverse impact on brand reputation. It has also highlighted the importance of providing proper training and development facilities so that they can handle different critical tasks on their own. Thus, employee empowerment is another key aspect of the healthcare sector organizations that leaders will have to use in an effective way.

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