Impact of teamwork on missed care in four Australian hospitals

Aims and objectives: Investigate effects of teamwork on missed nursing care across a healthcare network in Australia. Background: Missed care is universally used as an indicator of quality nursing care, however, little is known about mitigating effects of teamwork on these events. Design: A descriptive exploratory study. Methods: Missed Care and Team Work surveys were completed by 334 nurses. Using Stata software, nursing staff demographic information and components of missed care and teamwork were compared across the healthcare network. Statistical tests were performed to identify predicting factors for missed care. Results: The most commonly reported components of missed care were as follows: ambulation three times per day (43·3%), turning patient every two hours (29%) and mouth care (27·7%). The commonest reasons mentioned for missed care were as follows: inadequate labour resources (range 69·8–52·7%), followed by material resources (range 59·3–33·3%) and communication (range 39·3–27·2%). There were significant differences in missed care scores across units. Using the mean scores in regression correlation matrix, the negative relationship of missed care and teamwork was supported (r = −0·34, p < 0·001). Controlling for occupation of the staff member and staff characteristics in multiple regression models, teamwork alone accounted for about 9% of missed nursing care. Conclusion: Similar to previous international research findings, our results showed nursing teamwork significantly impacted on missed nursing care. Teamwork may be a mitigating factor to address missed care and future research is needed. Relevance to clinical practice: These results may provide administrators, educators and clinicians with information to develop practices and policies to improve patient care internationally.