Teamwork Makes the Dream Work for Hospitality Health ER

In 2014 registered nurse Jeanne Shipp was part of a small group of experienced emergency room staff members in the Houston, Texas area who wanted to start their own independently run freestanding emergency room. They established Patients Emergency Room in Baytown, and soon expanded with additional freestanding Hospitality Health ERs in Longview, Tyler, and Galveston. Jeanne Shipp and her team continue to focus on high-quality patient care and the teamwork that makes that possible.

Nurses and healthcare workers generally can’t be successful on their own. In fact, medicine has been a team sport from the beginning. Experts note that teamwork and communication are critically important when it comes to patient care. Today’s healthcare workers are a multidisciplinary force of primary care doctors, specialists, technicians, nurses, and assistants, all working toward the same goal. The level of teamwork a group of medical professionals exhibits has a direct effect on patient safety and healthcare outcomes and on patients’ satisfaction with their care.

Monitoring patient progress successfully depends on clear, regular, systematized communication so that everyone on the team is up to date on treatment plans. Frequent communication means that teams have easier access to one another’s assessment of a patient, and that they can identify and address potential problems more quickly.

It’s also now widely acknowledged that a conscious effort to build a system of teamwork and communication results in higher levels of staff retention, lower rates of burnout, and greater overall job satisfaction for healthcare workers.