The Role of Interpersonal Relations in Healthcare Team Communication and Patient Safety: A Proposed Model of Interpersonal Process in Teamwork
Abstract
Patient safety is compromised by medical errors and adverse events related to miscommunications among healthcare providers. Communication among healthcare providers is affected by human factors, such as interpersonal relations. Yet, discussions of interpersonal relations and communication are lacking in healthcare team literature. This paper proposes a theoretical framework that explains how interpersonal relations among healthcare team members affect communication and team performance, such as patient safety. We synthesized studies from health and social science disciplines to construct a theoretical framework that explicates the links among these constructs. From our synthesis, we identified two relevant theories: framework on interpersonal processes based on social relation model and the theory of relational coordination. The former involves three steps: perception, evaluation, and feedback; and the latter captures relational communicative behavior. We propose that manifestations of provider relations are embedded in the third step of the framework on interpersonal processes: feedback. Thus, varying team-member relationships lead to varying collaborative behavior, which affects patient-safety outcomes via a change in team communication. The proposed framework offers new perspectives for understanding how workplace relations affect healthcare team performance. The framework can be used by nurses, administrators, and educators to improve patient safety, team communication, or to resolve conflicts.
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Biographies
Charlotte Tsz-Sum Lee is an assistant professor at the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. Her research focuses on health services evaluation and interprofessional teams, including the examination of how interpersonal relationships affect teamwork processes and outcomes in health care.
Diane Marie Doran is an international expert on health services research, outcomes measurement, patient safety and e-health. She has more than 80 peer-reviewed publications to her credit. One of the former home care nurse's areas of scholarly interest is the safety of home care clients. She is a recipient of a Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care Nursing Senior Career Research Award.
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Article first published online: March 28, 2017
Issue published: June 2017
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PubMed: 28841059
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