Nurses use teamwork skills daily, which is vital when collaborating with other nurses and developing patient care plans with doctors. Working as a team is essential for reducing medical errors, improving patient care and establishing a more efficient workflow. Learning how to work better in a team can help you advance your nursing career and provide more effective patient care.
In this article, we describe how nurses can benefit from having strong teamwork skills and share seven actionable tips to help you improve how well you work in a team as a nurse.
What are the benefits of teamwork in nursing?
Teamwork is integral to nursing because it creates effective and open communication with other health care professionals and builds strong working relationships, improving the team’s cohesion and effectiveness. It also improves your ability to provide care for patients and increases positive health outcomes for them while promoting a positive work environment. As a nurse, you have an important position that connects patients, doctors and administrative personnel in your health care facility. When you use teamwork successfully, you can experience some of the following benefits for your workplace, your colleagues and yourself:
- Greater job satisfaction: Being able to work well as a team with your nursing colleagues can improve job satisfaction by helping you reduce stress and increase happiness at work. When you can trust others to work with you toward a common goal, you can enjoy a balanced workload and explore the aspects of nursing you enjoy the most.
- Improved patient care: Multiple nurses and other health care professionals can collaborate when treating patients, and using teamwork helps them provide a consistent standard of care to each patient. This improves the patient’s experience and health outcomes, upholds accountability and makes the treatment process safer.
- More efficient processes: When multiple nursing professionals work together as a team, they can delegate tasks effectively and determine the most efficient way to accomplish their goals. Your teamwork skills can save time, allowing you to serve more patients while providing high-quality care.
- Stronger professional connections: A team-oriented mindset when working as a nurse can help you learn more about your colleagues and strengthen your professional network. Communicating with all the health care professionals on your team can introduce you to mentorship opportunities, inspire your career goals and allow you to share your nursing expertise with others.
- Lower health care costs: Effective teamwork can lower overall health care costs because they can use resources more efficiently and streamline how they provide health care services.
- Improved regulatory compliance: Teamwork in nursing can improve regulatory compliance of the health care facility because it can help provide more oversight and accountability to work tasks.
7 tips for improving teamwork as a nurse
Whether you’re a new nurse seeking to integrate into your workplace or an experienced nurse looking to be more successful at work, you can improve your teamwork skills by using these tips:
1. Increase communication
Use written and verbal communication to collaborate with other nursing and health care professionals and develop a team dynamic. You can encourage your team members to voice their opinions, make suggestions and be more vocal. Try to ensure they listen carefully to instructions and respect others’ opinions. Consider improving your communication skills through training and drills. For example, participating in a drill to evaluate your nursing team’s communication skills can help you determine key areas for improvement.
Based on your findings, you can implement new avenues of communication that allow for greater collaboration within a nursing team. Increased communication can help improve teamwork in nursing and lead to greater motivation levels and camaraderie among the team. Professionally, better communication can increase efficiency, minimize errors while performing duties, and help you better connect with patients, improving overall health outcomes.
2. Be transparent
You can establish transparency in your team by being honest and direct with your nursing colleagues and patients. Being transparent promotes teamwork because it ensures everyone on the team has the same information, expectations and standards. Practice transparency by taking detailed chart notes for each patient and regularly checking in with your nursing team to confirm the status of various priorities.
You can also increase transparency by requesting clarification on your assignments and asking for help if you feel overwhelmed with your work or feel uncertain about the best way to help a patient. Keeping your team informed about your needs can provide opportunities to learn and help you prevent burnout.
3. Clarify roles
Classifying and clarifying roles can improve team collaboration. Establishing clear expectations for each team member can confirm that everyone accomplishes their assigned tasks correctly. When everyone knows who performs each role on a team, it makes it easier to find essential information and quickly complete priority tasks.
To develop nursing team roles that promote teamwork, you can write the scope of each position in a shared document everyone on the team can access. Try to divide tasks fairly based on experience and training, and update the document regularly to reflect any changes. When new employees join your health care team, they can review the document to learn about nursing workflows and internal processes and find their niche in the team.
4. Promote adaptability
Practice being flexible and adaptable so you can quickly assist your team members when they need help. By encouraging adaptability among your team members, you can make adjustments to provide customized care to each patient and successfully navigate unexpected situations. You can be more adaptable as a nurse by paying attention to your surroundings and preparing to offer support if you notice another health care professional or team member needs help. Your problem-solving skills can help you reorganize and simplify tasks so everyone on your team can accomplish their priorities.
Another technique for building adaptability is shadowing your colleagues and learning about their approach to nursing. Learning new skills can make it easier for you to work together and support one another. Also, consider exploring the use of technology to track schedules and tasks to increase adaptability.
5. Follow up
Reach out to other health care providers and follow up about patient care to improve accountability throughout the nursing team. Because health care institutions may work with high volumes of patients, it’s important to take the initiative and track the progress of tasks, like sending referrals, processing labs and scheduling appointments. Try to update your colleagues when you accomplish tasks and follow up with them when working together to treat patients. Following up with colleagues and health care providers at other institutions can help your team stay organized and meet objectives on time.
When following up on a task, document your communications with patients and health care professionals. Note who you contacted, when you followed up and how you communicated with them, such as over the phone or in person. Collecting this information lets your team members know who to contact about any updates and when to follow up again.
6. Complete regular training
You can expand your nursing skills by regularly attending professional development training opportunities with your team. When each nursing team member improves their knowledge and abilities, they can contribute more to the team’s collective strengths. Coordinate opportunities for your team to review nursing basics and/or take classes to learn new, innovative health care strategies. For specific programs, you can consider appointing one person to attend the training and have them pass on the information to others on the team.
You can also train as a team by establishing a mentoring or coaching program where each nursing staff member can share their expertise with the team. This can cultivate teamwork by allowing everyone to teach about their passions and learn from others.
7. Set an example for others
Being mindful of your attitude and behaviors can help you encourage a culture of teamwork by setting an example for others to follow. Your choices can set an example of how to be successful in a nursing team. You can use your contributions to help the team bond and demonstrate the value of being a team player.
Try to maintain a high standard for yourself by seeking opportunities to help others, using active listening skills and getting to know everyone on your team. Encouraging others, following best practices for nursing and prioritizing your patients can create an expectation of collaboration and teamwork.
