ICHM 2018

TEAMWORK AND PATIENT SAFETY IN HOSPITAL SETTINGS:A LITERATURE

REVIEW
1
Lidya Maryani, 2F. Sri Susilaningsih, 2Kurniawan Yudianto
1
Faculty of Health Sciences, Bale Bandung Univerity, Bandung, West Java, Indonesia
2
Faculty of Nursing, Padjadjaran University, Bandung, West Java, Indonesia
Corresponding Email: lidyashare@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Background: Effective teamwork among health professionals is an important key in

achieving patient safety goals. The important thing in patient safety context is how the team
works effectively in conducting the roles and interactions together accordingly with their
skills in order to achieve a well-agreed action and vision. Teamwork perspective in
supporting patient safety among health professionals or among teams involved in teamwork
are not yet equal. Teamwork is needed to improve a better understanding in patient safety
context.
Objectives: This literature review aims to identify teamwork issue(s) and its relationship on
improving patient safety aspect in the hospital service settings.
Methods: The search strategy uses electronic databases like ProQuest, Medline, Cengage
Learning and Google Cendikia. Keywords used are Teamwork, Team, Patient Safety, and
Interprofessional Teams. Additional search by keywords: Communication, Safety Culture,
Clinical Error and Safety Attitude, because some articles in the initial search use this special
terms. Studies published from 2011 to 2018 are considered to be included in this review. We
find ten studies in the form of survey research: self report questionnaire in the hospital setting
included in the review criteria.
Results: The result shows that teamwork has a positive relation with patient safety in term of
safety control, frequency of reporting events, grade on patient safety, safety climate,
performance of error reporting, levels of postsurgical complications and medication error.
Issues related to teamwork are Cognitive-behavioral teamwork, Feedback and
Communication About Errors, Communication Openness, Teamwork Across Hospital Units,
Teamwork Climate and Team Member Effectiveness.
Conclusions: This result supports the importance of teamwork in terms of cognitive and
balanced skills among the teams involved in patient health care. There is a positive relation
between teamwork and patient safety. An open communication between teams is needed to
achieve patient safety.

Keywords: interprofessional teamwork, patient safety, teamwork