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ABSTRACT
Teams are an integral part of healthcare industry nowadays. The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between team coordination and team effectiveness among nurses in Malaysian public hospital. This study was conducted among 92 teams of staff nurses in four general hospitals in Malaysia. Data analysis included descriptive statistics, correlations and regression analysis. The findings revealed that that team coordination was positively related to team effectiveness. The study suggest useful recommendations, limitations of the study were discussed and future research directions were drawn.
Keywords: Team coordination, Team Effectiveness, Nurses, Healthcare Industry.
1.INTRODUCTION
In hospital setting, the effectiveness of teamwork among nurses has been acknowledged as an essential element in provision of quality healthcare (Kalisch & Lee, 2010; Kilpatrick, 2013; Valentine et al., 2015). Healthcare industries, like many other organizations, are essentially team-based (Cook & Hyrkas 2010). Compared with traditional teams, health-care teams present more challenges as frequently the members are fluid, which requires greater coordination and utilization of skill sets (Bushe & Chu 2011; Cook & Hyrkas 2010).
In Malaysia, even though research on team effectiveness across industries is extensive, but little has been done on nursing workforce (Hameed & Noor, 2014). For example, Mahembe and Engelbrecht (2014) studied team effectiveness among school teachers, Doolen (2001) and Blanchard (2013) examined team effectiveness of employees in production and engineering teams, Fransen et. al., (2011) and Bushe and Coetzer (2007) investigated team effectiveness among final year students in project team. To the researcher's knowledge, very few studies have been conducted in the nursing context specifically in Malaysian healthcare industry.
Nursing teams are important in ensuring positive health outcomes of patients. The utilization of teams, especially among nurses is advantageous as their tasks are becoming highly interdependent and unpredictable. Effective nursing teams produce greater quality of care, fewer errors, and more satisfied patients (Gausvik et. al., 2015; West & Lyuboynikoya, 2013). In teams, nurses deliver safe care that affects not only patients' health but also patients' emotions. To ensure smooth operation of everyday tasks, nursing teams must always respond effectively to recurring tasks and situations among which are medication administration, patients' documentation, patients' health assessment, and team supervisions. Effective accomplishments of nursing tasks will impact the overall quality of care, the wellbeing of...