BMJ quality & safety
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BMJ quality & safety · Jun 2020
A mixed methods study examining teamwork shared mental models of interprofessional teams during hospital discharge.
Little is known about how team processes impact providers' abilities to prepare patients for a safe hospital discharge. Teamwork Shared Mental Models (teamwork-SMMs) are the teams' organised understanding of individual member's roles, interactions and behaviours needed to perform a task like hospital discharge. Teamwork-SMMs are linked to team effectiveness in other fields, but have not been readily investigated in healthcare. This study examines teamwork-SMMs to understand how interprofessional teams coordinate care when discharging patients. ⋯ Examining the quality and agreement of teamwork-SMMs among teams provides a better understanding of how teams coordinate care and may facilitate the development of specific team-based interventions to improve patient care at hospital discharge.