Understanding and Facilitating Collaboration in Healthcare

Abstract

Research of collaborative work in healthcare provides new insights into team performance, communication, coordination, and the role of information technology. These new insights may be translated into other domains where continuous operations by multi-disciplinary teams are essential. The symposium will provide a forum for a conceptual framework on shared information spaces (conversational and visual), the relational infrastructure and specific benefits inherent in effective collaboration across teams, interdisciplinary communication strategies in ICU settings, barriers to attaining common ground as well as strategies for facilitating common ground, and the nature of handoffs when pediatric ICU patients transfer to a step-down unit. All of these reports originated from empirical examinations of collaborative work in high stakes healthcare settings. As a whole, this symposium represents a snapshot of how human factors can contribute to healthcare by improving our understanding of how collaboration occurs and can be promoted in healthcare settings.