Many incidents, claims and complaints involve poor communication and team working as a contributory factor or a root cause. Currently team training is not mandatory for NHS staff and many people assume staff already know how to work well as a team. TeamSTEPPS® (Team Strategies and Tools to enhance Performance and Patient Safety) is a well known and respected Team training model. It focuses on four key skills to improve patient safety: communication, leadership, situation monitoring and mutual support. Team Training has been shown to improve team efficiency and improve outcomes for patients (Hughes et al 2016). At Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, the patient safety lead secured approval from the Executive Team to pilot team training on two wards. The patient safety lead had undertaken the TeamSTEPPS® Master Trainer course (and the other two faculty members had registered to complete it during the pilot).
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