Association Helps Hospitals Enhance Their Culture of Patient Safety Through TeamSTEPPS Program

The Hospital Association of Southern California is helping hospitals enhance their culture of patient safety by facilitating TeamSTEPPS® workshops throughout Southern California. TeamSTEPPS (Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety) is a suite of tools and resources created by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Department of Defense, that hospitals and other health care providers can use to equip their staff with specialized communication techniques to prevent medical errors.
  
TeamSTEPPS is an evidence-based teamwork system aimed at optimizing patient care by improving communication and teamwork skills among healthcare professionals, including frontline staff. It includes a comprehensive set of ready-to-use materials and a training curriculum to successfully integrate teamwork principles into a variety of settings. The program provides higher quality, safer patient care by: producing highly effective medical teams that optimize the use of information and resources to achieve the best clinical outcomes for patients; increasing team awareness and clarifying team roles and responsibilities; resolving conflicts and improving information exchange; and eliminating barriers to quality and safety.
  
TeamSTEPPS practices can be applied to any hospital-focused improvement effort – from hand hygiene to sepsis management. Core to the program is culture change. Working environments with mutual support create safer conditions for patients, improved morale and reduced employee turnover. 
  
"Optimizing team performance across the healthcare delivery system will improve every hospital's patient safety culture and will prevent medical errors – guaranteed," says Julia Slininger, vice president of quality and patient safety at the hospital association.
  
"Promoting the ability to anticipate and support team members' needs through accurate knowledge of responsibilities, effective information exchange and workload balance has improved our culture at Riverside University Health System Medical Center and given our teams an important building block for success," says Dr. Arnold Tabuenca, chief medical officer at the 439-bed hospital in Moreno Valley.
  
In the Inland Empire, a regional TeamSTEPPS collaborative (funded in part by Inland Empire Health Plan) has hospitals working together in a concentrated approach to accelerate improvement by learning from each other. The 2015 cohort included nine Inland Empire hospitals: Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, Loma Linda University Medical Center, Riverside University Health System - Medical Center, Montclair Hospital Medical Center, Chino Valley Medical Center, Eisenhower Medical Center, Hemet Valley Medical Center, Menifee Valley Medical Center and Dignity Health-St. Bernardine Medical Center. Each of these hospitals are now acknowledged as TeamSTEPPS champions in the region - and all other Inland Empire hospitals will be invited to participate in either the 2016 or 2017 cohorts. Additional TeamSTEPPS program opportunities for hospitals in Southern California are scheduled in 2016 and 2017. 
  
Source: Hospital Association of Southern California