A Multifaceted Intervention to Improve Teamwork on an Inpatient Pediatric Neurosurgery Service.

BACKGROUND: Increased safety reports related to interprofessional teamwork on an acute care unit at a quaternary children's hospital prompted a teamwork-focused improvement effort on the pediatric neurosurgery service. METHODS: An interprofessional workgroup was formed and met twice monthly throughout the project. A survey using modified validated items was disseminated to pediatric neurosurgery nurses, advanced practice providers (APPs), and physicians in March 2021 to identify opportunities for improvement. Structured debriefs on survey results promoted discourse on teamwork. The researchers implemented two interventions: (1) nursing-centered interprofessional education and (2) a rounding checklist before redistributing the survey in December 2021. RESULTS: Baseline and follow-up survey response rates were 84.1% (58/69) and 71.4% (50/70), respectively. Nurses at baseline perceived lower teamwork scores for 12 items compared to physicians and APPs (p < 0.05). Nurse perceptions improved after interventions in: "using 'we' rather than 'they'" (21.3% vs. 51.2% agree, p = 0.003), "I am confident that this team works effectively" (46.8% vs. 80.5%, p = 0.001), "shared understanding of each other's role on the team" (48.9% vs. 73.2% agree, p = 0.02), and "getting others on the team to listen" (46.8% vs. 75.6%, p = 0.004). Mean teamwork effectiveness improved from 4.12 to 5.25 (out of 7; p < 0.0001). Nurses ranked three interventions as most effective: interprofessional training (35/41, 85.4%), educational clinical pearls (14/41, 34.1%), and structured opportunities to discuss teamwork (10/41, 24.4%). CONCLUSION: Interprofessional training, a teamwork survey, and structured debriefing improved nurse perceptions of teamwork. Interventions targeting social components of change can improve teamwork even without process changes.

Physician Perceptions of Performance Feedback and Impact on Personal Well-Being: A Qualitative Exploration of Patient Satisfaction Feedback in Neurology.

BACKGROUND: To understand neurologists' experiences and perspectives on patient satisfaction feedback and its impact on personal well-being and behavior. METHODS: From May to June 2021, the researchers conducted 19 semistructured interviews with neurologists from a large academic medical center. Clinical Performance Feedback Intervention Theory informed a combined inductive and deductive thematic analysis of the qualitative data, which focused on perceptions of current feedback practices, its impact on physician behavior, and recommendations for improvement. RESULTS: Participants tended to be female (n = 12/19, 63.2%), aged 30-39 (n = 8/19, 42.1%), white (n = 9/19, 47.4%), and were 10+ years into clinical practice (n = 18/19, 94.7%). Physicians were receptive to feedback overall, but perceptions varied by feedback type. Physicians preferred informal feedback (delivered unprompted directly by patients), given its tendency toward actionability. They disliked formal feedback (derived from anonymous surveys) due to low actionability, bias and validity issues, lack of contextual considerations, delivery through public reports, and links to financial incentives. Nearly all physicians reported formal feedback programs had the potential to negatively affect well-being and were not beneficial to their practice; a few reported adjusting their clinical practice to improve patient satisfaction performance. Five recommendations to improve patient satisfaction feedback programs emerged: Align on feedback intent, acknowledge survey limitations during program administration, increase actionability of feedback through specificity and control, support direct patient-physician feedback and problem resolution, and support empathetic integration of feedback. CONCLUSION: Understanding physician perceptions of current approaches to patient satisfaction feedback offers the opportunity to shape subsequent collection and distribution methods to improve physician performance and optimize professional fulfillment.

Assessing Leadership Behavior in Health Care: Introducing the Local Leadership Scale of the SCORE Survey.

BACKGROUND: Engaged and accessible leadership is a key component of care excellence. However, the field lacks brief, reliable, and actionable measures of feedback and coaching-related behaviors of local leaders (for example, provides frequent feedback). The current study introduces a five-item Local Leadership (LL) scale by examining its psychometric properties, providing benchmarking across demographic factors and work settings, assessing its association with psychological safety, and testing whether LL predicts reports of restricted activities and absenteeism. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, 23,853 questionnaires were distributed across 31 Midwestern US hospitals. The survey included the LL scale, as well as safety culture and well-being scales. Psychometric analyses (Cronbach's α, confirmatory factor analysis [CFA] fit: root square mean error of the approximation [RMSEA], comparative fit index [CFI], Tucker-Lewis index [TLI]), Spearman correlations, t-tests, and analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were used to test the properties of the LL scale and differences by health care worker and work setting characteristics. RESULTS: A total of 16,797 surveys were returned (70.4% response rate). The LL scale exhibited strong psychometric properties (Cronbach's α = 0.94; RMSEA = 0.079; CFI = 0.99; TLI = 0.98). LL scores differed by role, shift, shift length, and years in specialty. Of all roles, leaders (for example, managers) rated leaders most favorably. Nonclinical (vs. clinical) and nonsurgical (vs. surgical) work settings reported higher LL. LL scores correlated positively with psychological safety, absenteeism, and activities restricted due to illness. CONCLUSION: The LL scale exhibits strong psychometric properties, convergent validity with psychological safety, and variation by work setting, work setting type, role, shift, shift length, and specialty. The study indicates that assessing leadership behaviors with the LL scale is useful and offers actionable behaviors for leaders to improve safety culture within teams.

Leadership Behavior Associations with Domains of Safety Culture, Engagement, and Health Care Worker Well-Being.

BACKGROUND: Leadership is a key driver of health care worker well-being and engagement, and feedback is an essential leadership behavior. Methods for evaluating interaction norms of local leaders are not well developed. Moreover, associations between local leadership and related domains are poorly understood. This study sought to evaluate health care worker leadership behaviors in relation to burnout, safety culture, and engagement using the Local Leadership scale of the Safety, Communication, Operational Reliability, and Engagement (SCORE) survey. METHODS: The SCORE survey was administered to 31 Midwestern hospitals as part of a broad effort to measure care context, with domains including Local Leadership, Emotional Exhaustion/Burnout, Safety Climate, and Engagement. Mixed-effects hierarchical logistic regression was used to evaluate the relationships between local leadership scores and related domains, adjusted for role and work-setting characteristics. RESULTS: Of the 23,853 distributed surveys, 16,797 (70.4%) were returned. Local leadership scores averaged 68.8 ± 29.1, with 7,338 (44.2%) reporting emotional exhaustion, 9,147 (55.9%) reporting concerning safety climate, 10,974 (68.4%) reporting concerning teamwork climate, 7,857 (47.5%) reporting high workload, and 3,436 (20.7%) reporting intentions to leave. Each 10-point increase in local leadership score was associated with odds ratios of 0.72 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.71-0.73) for burnout, 0.48 (95% CI 0.47-0.49) for concerning safety climate, 0.64 (95% CI 0.63-0.66) for concerning teamwork climate, 0.90 (95% CI 0.89-0.92) for high workload, and 0.80 (95% CI 0.78-0.81) for intentions to leave, after adjustment for unit and provider characteristics. CONCLUSION: Local leadership behaviors are readily measurable using a five-item scale and strongly associate with established domains of health care worker well-being, safety culture, and engagement.

An exploratory study of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction for emotional eating.

Emotional eating is an important predictor of weight loss and weight regain after weight loss. This two part study's primary aim was to explore changes in emotional eating in a general population of individuals taking the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, with a secondary aim to explore whether changes in mindfulness predicted changes in emotional eating. Self-reported survey data exploring these questions were collected before and after the intervention for two sequential studies (Study 1 and Study 2). While there were no control groups for either study, in both studies emotional eating scores following the MBSR were significantly lower than scores prior to taking the MBSR (p < 0.001; p < 0.001) In Study 2, changes in mindfulness were correlated with changes in emotional eating (r = 0.317, p = 0.004). These results suggest that MBSR may be an effective intervention for emotional eating, and that further research is warranted to examine effects on weight loss and maintenance.