Team Interactions and Health IT Use during Hospital Multidisciplinary Rounds

Abstract

Multidisciplinary rounds (MDRs) are an important form of team-based process in health care. Team members coordinate patient care and make decisions on care plans jointly. Health IT used during MDRs should be designed to facilitate the team interactions given the specific context or work system where MDRs occur. This study examines and compares team interactions and health IT use in three hospital services (contexts): hospitalist, cardiology and critical care. There were few differences in team interactions and health IT use across services. However, health IT use was different for different rounding tasks and team members. Therefore, health IT should be designed to support team interactions and users’ needs during MDRs in different contexts.