Critical Care Nurse Teamwork Essay

Introduction The American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN) has made an active commitment to promote the creation of healthy work environments that support excellence in patient care. There is a plethora of evidence supporting the notion that unhealthy work environments contribute to many other serious problems in healthcare such as medical errors, patient readmission, and nurse turnover. Therefore, the AACN has put forth six essential standards for the establishing and sustaining of healthy work environments. These standards are evidenced-based and relationship-centered, and they include: skilled communication, true collaboration, effective decision making, appropriate staffing, meaningful recognition, and authentic leadership (“AACN
The Burn Center at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta understands that it takes more than just skills, technology, and compassion to care for patients; teamwork is essential (Raines, 2010). This unit, in particular, improves teamwork by focusing on education, sending staff members to conferences, and team-building classes. A Wall of Recognition displays patient thank-you notes and performance goals met to affirm the value of a dedicated team. Teamwork has also helped the cardiovascular-thoracic critical care unit at Emory University Hospital earn the Beacon Designation, awarded to outstanding critical care units by the AACN. This unit has a unique approach to teamwork in that every nurse has a specialty, such as infection control or skin care. It is then their job to gather resources, learn about new products, and share that information with all members of the team so that they can address particular problems together (Raines,
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