Nurse as a Team Builder Sentence Outline Essay

Abstract

This paper will discuss teambuilding in nursing and how it affects the way nurses perform their roles in different healthcare settings. The journal article to be reviewed in this discussion uncovers more information about effective strategies that nurses need to use to network and share information with other healthcare professionals.

The article also reveals why healthcare administrators need to implement effective teamwork systems that encourage nurses to collaborate and share ideas. Barriers that make it difficult for workers to collaborate and share ideas will also be highlighted.

This paper will show the importance of teambuilding in nursing and how it helps nurses offer quality care to their patients. Teams help organizations become more competitive in their operations in industries they operate in.

Nurse as a Team-Builder Sentence Outline

Thesis Statement: In modern healthcare systems, healthcare services have become more specialized and this requires all nurses to collaborate and share knowledge to achieve good outcomes in their duties (Gonzalez & Rotman, 2010, p. 2).

Importance of Strong Structures and Defining a Team

1. Strong Structures
   1. Strong workplace structures make workers more focused which help them understand their responsibilities and organizational expectations they need to attain. Healthcare professionals need to be guided by clear workplace policies to help them attain good results in different tasks they are required to perform
   2. The issue of patient care and safety is very important in any healthcare environment. Effective relationships between nurses encourage them to share knowledge. As a result, they reduce unnecessary errors in their duties which helps them provide high quality care to their patients.
   3. All workplace barriers need to be eliminated to ensure nurses are provided with good working conditions to make them provide high quality healthcare services to their patients.
2. Definition of a Team
   1. A team can be described as a collection of people willing to share their skills, resources and ideas to achieve common goals, using a common approach which they are answerable to.
   2. A team is also a group of professionals who are mandated by their organizations to pool their collective efforts and ideas to enable them achieve positive outcomes out of various work processes.
   3. For a team to achieve good outcomes, all members need to be diligent to enable them attain their individual as well as collective goals. They need to make personal sacrifices to stay focused on various tasks they are expected to perform in their respective workstations.
   4. Teams are able to perform more tasks than individuals especially when members communicate with each other effectively. Members need to accommodate their ideological differences to ensure everyone is given a fair chance to participate in all processes that enable workplace teams to attain their goals.
   5. Meetings serve as important forums in which different team members decide on different agendas they intend to pursue to achieve good results. In meetings, members are able to discuss various issues that affect them and they are able to propose solutions to these issues to enable them achieve positive outcomes.

Forming a Team

1. Five Main Stages
   1. Forming: This involves people with common interests and goals coming together to discuss the specific agenda that makes them perform various tasks as a team.
   2. Storming: This is the stage where disputes between various members are likely to arise due to different competing interests. In some instances, some members may not be pleased with the direction the team is moving, especially when their ideas are not taken seriously.
   3. Norming: This is the stage when group members compromise and resolve their disputes. Afterwards, all members are able to unite and come up with an agreeable structure where all members are assigned specific roles they are required to perform.
   4. Performing: In this stage, all members collaborate to perform various tasks they have been assigned. All members work within the structure earlier established and they set targets and timelines in which they expect to accomplish them.
   5. Reforming: This is the stage when the team disbands after objectives that brought them together are accomplished. However in some instances, a team may disband even before it has attained the objectives it had set for itself at the onset if members fail to collaborate to achieve desired results.
2. Important Elements
   1. A team needs a strong leader to help it execute its functions more effectively. A strong leader needs to help a team understand its vision and specific actions it needs to perform to achieve its objectives.
   2. A team needs to have specific goals and objectives to help it measure the success it has achieved out of various tasks. This helps members evaluate their contributions after a specific period of time to find out if their efforts satisfy their expectations.
   3. A team also needs adequate resources in form of time and money to help members perform all duties assigned to them more effectively. This makes members dedicate their efforts towards achieving set goals.
   4. A team also needs to understand the vision of the health institution its members work for. This helps all members to understand specific actions they need to do to achieve positive results.
   5. Teams need to allocate time for members to bond with one another to make them have a unity of purpose. This enables all nurses to share their experiences freely.

Team Building Barriers and Team Relationships

1. Barriers
   1. Gender differences are likely to have an impact on the way nurses perform their duties in a team setup.
   2. Differences in age are likely to affect how team members perform their responsibilities.
   3. Inadequate resources in form of time, materials and financial funds may make it difficult for team members to execute their functions.
   4. Unclear objectives make members not to have a clear focus about what they intend to do.
2. Team Relationships
   1. Every individual needs to be given adequate resources to perform all responsibilities he or she has been assigned at work.
   2. Strong relationships allow nurses to identify their weaknesses to come up with proper solutions on how they need to solve them.
   3. Nurses who easily collaborate on various tasks are able to attain set targets easily.
   4. Strong team relationships also help nurses to acquire multi-disciplinary skills which make them perform various tasks in the healthcare settings more effectively.

Networking, Sharing Knowledge &Outcomes

1. Importance of Networking
   1. Networking between different healthcare professionals occurs during meetings, events and conferences.
   2. These interactions enable healthcare workers to socialize and establish strong relationships with other professionals.
   3. Some unplanned encounters between health professionals can also open up opportunities for future networking.
   4. Nurses working in different departments can also network and share knowledge related to different areas of their expertise.
2. Sharing Knowledge
   1. Nurses need to share knowledge by socializing with their colleagues at work.
   2. They need to join professional nursing organizations to share their experiences with other caregivers working in different healthcare settings.
   3. Networking allows nurses to acquire new skills which are beneficial to their careers and their patients.
   4. Nurses can also network through electronic modes of communication such as the internet with other nurses in different healthcare settings in other parts of the world.
3. Benefits and Outcomes
   1. Teamwork and networking helps nurses acquire multi disciplinary skills which make them more effective in their duties at work. This helps a healthcare institution to develop solutions to common problems it faces.
   2. Nurses who share information are able to build trust and confidence in each other. As a result, this helps them to grow and develop new capabilities to handle various challenges in their workstations.
   3. Organizations that encourage their nurses to network are able to develop strong synergies which help them deal with complex problems they are facing easily.
   4. Effective team building approaches make nurses more satisfied and committed to healthcare organizations they are working in.

Conclusion

Team building and networking helps all nurses acquire vital skills that make them offer quality healthcare services to their patients. Healthcare organizations need to improve working conditions for nurses to make them more competitive in their duties.

They need to offer adequate resources to their employees to encourage them to form strong collaborations with their colleagues. Teambuilding can only succeed if nurses have clear objectives to make them more focused in their responsibilities. This will help them attain good outcomes out of different activities they undertake.

References

Gonzalez, C.M., & Rotman, S. (2010). Building blocks of teamwork: Effective strategies can reduce turnover rates, improve group cohesion and nurse satisfaction. The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 11(2), 2-10. Web.