The Communications Lifeline in TeamSTEPPS

Communication is the lifeline of a well-functioning team. Communication strategies and tools improve effectiveness and promote the sharing of information. Improving the quality of information exchange decreases communication-related errors.

Module 6: Communications within The Long-Term Care Version of TeamSTEPPS offers presentations and worksheets to improve team communication.

Communication is an important component of the team process because it serves as a coordinating mechanism or supporting structure for teamwork. Communication skills interplay directly with Modules 3–5: Leadership, Situation Monitoring and Mutual Support.

Module 6 includes

• Instructor Slides
• Classroom Slides

Learn more about how atom Alliance works with long-term care providers to improve the care of those they serve.

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The Commonwealth Fund Creates eBook for Medicare’s 50th Anniversary

Medicare at 50 Years, an eBook created by The Commonwealth Fund, comprises six in-depth papers about the past, present and future of Medicare, each written by a national expert on Medicare and health policy. Read and share with others:

• Medicare: 50 Years of Ensuring Coverage and Care
• The Affordable Care Act and Medicare: How the Law Is Changing the Program and the Challenges That Remain
• Medicare Payment Reform: Aligning Incentives for Better Care
• Modernizing Medicare’s Benefit Design and Low-Income Subsidies to Ensure Access and Affordability
• Serving Older Adults with Complex Care Needs: A New Benefit Option for Medicare
• Predictable Unpredictability: The Problem with Basing Medicare Policy on Long-Term Financial Forecasting

Also featured is a timeline—50 Years of Medicare: How Did We Get Here?

Go here to learn more and download the eBook.

Contracted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), atom Alliance is a five-year, five-state initiative to ignite powerful and sustainable change in healthcare quality. Formed as a partnership between three leading healthcare consultancies, atom Alliance works throughout Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee to improve quality and achieve better outcomes in health and healthcare and at lower costs for the patients and communities we serve.

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Teamwork: It’s Mutual in TeamSTEPPS

Mutual support is critical to the social and task performance aspects of teams. Team members need to fully understand what each one of the others does in order to provide reinforcement.

Mutual support is the essence of teamwork. It provides a safety net to help prevent errors, increase effectiveness and minimize strain caused by work overload. Over time, continuous mutual support fosters team adaptability, mutual trust and team orientation.

Module 5: Mutual Support within The Long-Term Care Version of TeamSTEPPS builds upon Modules 2–4 and provides presentations and worksheets to help encourage mutual support on your team.

Module 5 includes

• Instructor Slides
• Classroom Slides
• Mutual Support Exercise Sheet

Learn more about how atom Alliance works with long-term care providers to improve the care of those they serve.

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Monitoring Situations the TeamSTEPPS Way

Situation monitoring is a key component of the teamwork process. Continual monitoring of a situation enables the team to anticipate and predict the needs of residents and fellow team members, allowing the team to be more adaptive and flexible.

Effective teams possess a shared understanding of the way a procedure or plan should be carried out and established goals met, which allows teams to mitigate and correct errors before they occur or cause harm to the resident.

Module 4: Situation Monitoring within The Long-Term Care Version of TeamSTEPPS builds upon Module 2: Team Structure and Module 3: Leadership and provides presentations and worksheets to monitor situations on your team.

Module 4 includes

• Instructor Slides
• Classroom Slides
• Situation Monitoring Exercise Sheet

Learn more about how atom Alliance works with long-term care providers to improve the care of those they serve.

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The Leadership Linchpin in TeamSTEPPS

Leadership is the linchpin that holds a teamwork system together. Effective leaders create the climate that allows teamwork to flourish. Leaders must monitor, communicate and reinforce the collaborative environment they’ve created.

Leaders impact team effectiveness not by handing down solutions to teams, rather by facilitating team problem-solving through cognitive processes, coordination processes and the team‘s collective motivation and behaviors.

Module 3: Leadership within The Long-Term Care Version of TeamSTEPPS builds upon Module 2: Teamwork Structure and provides presentations and worksheets to foster leadership on teams.

Module 3 includes

• Instructor Materials
• Classroom Slides
• Leadership Exercise Sheet

Learn more about how atom Alliance works with long-term care providers to improve the care of those they serve.

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Using TeamSTEPPS to Build a Team Structure

Teamwork cannot occur in the absence of a clearly defined team. Therefore, improving upon an existing—or designing a new— team structure is the first step in implementing a teamwork system in any environment. This is the basis for Module 2: Team Structure, which provides presentations and worksheets to begin building a team.

Organizational researchers have long focused on the value of teams as a unit of task work, with leadership serving as a means for improving employee performance and attitudes. It is important to first understand the structure of teams to learn how to promote teamwork and create a climate conducive to effective team functioning. Such a climate is based on a commitment to collaboration, mutual accountability, acknowledgment, recognition and professional respect.

Module 2 includes

• Instructor Slides
• Classroom Slides
• Multi-team System Exercise Sheet
• Teams and Teamwork Exercise Sheet

Go to The Long-Term Care Version of TeamSTEPPS.

Learn more about how atom Alliance works with long-term care providers to improve the care of those they serve.

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Nursing Home Change Package—Now Available in Bitesize

The National Nursing Home Change Package shares and organizes best practices into seven strategies. Now, you can download each bite-sized strategy of the change package, along with supporting action items, to share with your teams to create measurable change in your facilities.

Click on any of the seven strategies below to download the individual strategy.

1. Lead with a sense of purpose
2. Recruit and retain quality staff
3. Connect with residents in a celebration of their lives
4. Nourish teamwork and communication
5. Be a continuous learning organization
6. Provide exceptional compassionate clinical care that treats the whole person
7. Construct solid business practices that support your purpose

Individual Change Bundles provided in the package are also available. These bundles provide proven approaches to a specific topics that help providers more reliably deliver the best possible care for residents.

• Change Bundle: Avoidance of Unnecessary Antipsychotic Medications in Nursing Home Residents Living with Dementia
• Change Bundle: To Encourage Nursing Home Residents’ Mobility
• Change Bundle: To Prevent Healthcare Acquired Infections

Learn more about how atom Alliance is helping nursing homes in Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee implement these strategies.

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Implementing TeamSTEPPS in Your Facility

A carefully developed plan is critical to the success of any healthcare quality or safety improvement program. It establishes the strategy and focus for the entire effort. Time spent developing a detailed, information-driven plan will prevent countless wasted hours and setbacks during the implementation phase of your improvement program.

Once you have determined that TeamSTEPPS training is right for your facility, use the Module 10: Implementation Workshop tools available on The Long-Term Care Version of TeamSTEPPS website. Within those tools is a Course Management Guide that provides information on how to implement TeamSTEPPS. The guide offers

• The purpose of TeamSTEPPS training
• An overview of TeamSTEPPS
• The different course versions that are available
• How to prepare for and execute the course
• Validated measurement tools
• Sample course materials such as agendas, course evaluations, measurement tools, and training techniques

Learn more about how atom Alliance works with long-term care providers to improve the care of those they serve.

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Stepping Towards Better Communication with TeamSTEPPS

TeamSTEPPS is an evidence-based teamwork system, developed by The Department of Defense and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). It is designed to optimize patient outcomes by improving communication and teamwork skills among healthcare professionals, enabling them to respond quickly to situations that arise.

This curriculum incorporates over 25 years of scientific research that has been conducted on teams and team performance. It includes a comprehensive set of ready-to-use materials and a training curriculum to successfully integrate teamwork principles into any healthcare system.

The TeamSTEPPS Long-Term Care Version adapts the core concepts of the TeamSTEPPS program to reflect the environment of nursing homes and other long-term care settings. It includes an Instructor Guide with Introductory Material and Additional Materials, along with 11 Modules that teach the Fundamentals of the system, such as Team Structure, Leadership and Situation Monitoring.

Go to The Long-Term Care Version of TeamSTEPPS.

Learn more about how atom Alliance works with long-term care providers to improve the care of those they serve.

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Change Bundle Helps Prevent Healthcare Acquired Infections

In addition to sharing change concepts developed from the successful practices of high-performing nursing homes, The National Nursing Home Change Package provides healthcare improvement change bundles. These bundles provide a proven approach to a specific topic that helps providers more reliably deliver the best possible care for residents.

One change bundle is “To Prevent Healthcare Acquired Infections.” It includes a Six-Point set of actions with supporting actions that represent the practices described by nursing homes that have successfully prevented infections.

The Six-Points:

1. Promote hand hygiene.
2. Prevent transmission of infections by staff.
3. Prevent transmission of infection by all persons.
4. Establish and implement system-wide environmental cleaning policies.
5. Identify and treat infections appropriately.
6. Avoid indwelling catheter use unless appropriately indicated.

Go here to get this complete change bundle in the National Nursing Home Change Package.

Learn more about how atom Alliance is helping nursing homes in Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennesse improve quality of care for their residents.

Change Bundle: To Prevent Healthcare Acquired Infections.

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