Communication and collaboration are a major concern in healthcare organizations across the country related to quality and safe patient care. This paper describes the efforts of one healthcare organization in addressing the issues in its Interdisciplinary Team conferences utilizing a performance improvement methodology (Six Sigma). Participatory action research was used to engage healthcare team members to provide feedback. Implementations of the interventions, including education of the performance improvement methodology, were evaluated using qualitative methods. During a six month period, data was collected and analyzed through observations and participant interviews. The participants included all entities associated with patient care. At the end of six month, only 14 of the original 28 volunteers were left to provide information regarding the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the interventions. Overall, the interventions promoted self-awareness among the team members of the importance of sharing pertinent patient care information in order to enhance patient care.
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