One of the most valuable arts in all of life is the art of communication.
But it becomes extremely important when what we’re communicating has to do with someone’s
life or death.
Infact, there are 8 essential elements to successful communication for an effective
resuscitation team.
They are: being clear of what their roles and responsibilities are, knowing their limitations,
how to perform constructive interventions, how to communicate “knowledge sharing,”
how to summarize and reevaluate during a resuscitation, how to perform “closed-loop” communications,
how to use “clear messages” and how to practice mutual respect.
It is vital that those professionals who form the high performance resuscitation team know
what their role is and how to function within their role, and how to communicate effectively
in order to fulfill the goals and objectives of increasing the chance for a patient to
survive a cardiac arrest event.
Now let’s take a look at clear roles and responsibilities.
Each member of the team should have a great understanding of what their role and responsibility
is and also what the role of their fellow team member is.
Though each of these team members may have a different level of competency depending
on their particular license and expertise, they should have enough basic knowledge of
each role that they could fill in when there aren’t enough members to fill the required
roles.
It’s up to the team member to decide who fills in for those missing team members or
ultimately takes the role himself if no other option is available.
If this happens, it is vital that the team leader does not get myopic and forget about
the resuscitation as a whole.
It will be essential for the other team members to assist the team leader in successfully
accomplishing this.
When specific roles are miscommunicated or unclear, the whole team performance may suffer.
Even if there are enough providers for each specific role, poor performance can occur
due to unclear roles and responsibilities.
The next one is knowing our limitations.
A professional resuscitation team should be very clear on what their ACLS capabilities
and limitations are, as should the team leader.
This knowledge allows the team leader to evaluate the given resources available to him and call
for backup when available.
Remember that it’s never a sign of incompetence or weakness to ask for help if a team member
is limited in a specific function or skill.
It’s certainly better to be honest and get the appropriate help than do something or
not do something that could work negatively toward the resuscitation of the patient.
The next one is Constructive Interventions.
There is always the possibility that a team leader may intervene if a specific action
is not being performed appropriately.
The big takeaway here is that any intervention should be handled professionally, tactfully
and effectively.
It is suggested that team leaders should avoid confrontation with team members if it’s
going to be negative or have negative consequences on the patient’s outcome.
Next: Knowledge Sharing.
The American Heart Association research shows that sharing information is a critical component
of effective team performance.
At times, team leaders may become fixated on a specific treatment or diagnosis.
This is called fixation error.
There are 3 common types of these errors and they are: saying “everything is okay,”
or “this and only this is the correct path,” or lastly “do anything but this.”
When efforts in resuscitation are ineffective, it’s important to go back to the “basics”
and talk as a team.
On example may sound something like this, “Ok, we’ve observed the following based
on the assessment we’ve performed, and these are the treatments we’ve delivered.
Is there anything else that we’ve missed?”
Team members should communicate changes in the patient’s condition in order to help
the team leader make informed decisions correctly.
Summarizing and Reevaluating.
Remember that it’s essential as a team leader to monitor before and after treatments and
reevaluate regularly.
What is the patient’s current status, what treatments have been performed and what are
our latest assessment findings?
It’s a good practice to summarize this kind of information out loud in regular periodic
updates to the team.
Reviewing the status of the resuscitation and mapping out the next future steps is essential
to good open communication and effective team leading.
Don’t forget to ask for information from the timer/recorder as well.
Closed-Loop Communications.
When communicating with a high-performance resuscitation team, the team leader should
use closed-loop communication.
This can be accomplished by following these steps: The team leader gives a message, an
order or an assignment.
By receiving a clear response and making eye contact, the team leader confirms that the
team member heard the message and understood it.
The team leader listens for confirmation of task performance from the team member before
assigning another task.
Clear Messages.
Concise communication with distinctive speech in a controlled and non-emotional tone of
voice is an example of clear messaging.
It should be the goal of all healthcare professionals to deliver messages and orders in a calm and
direct manner without yelling, shouting or talking over any other team member.
Inefficient or ineffective messaging resulting in a poorly managed resuscitation can be the
result of of unclear communication.
Remember, only one person at a time should be talking at any given time.
And lastly, Mutual Respect.
High performance teams that work well together and achieve measurable effectiveness are composed
of professionals who work together in a respectful and supportive manner.
In order for teamwork to work effectively, everyone must work diligently towards the
same goal.
No one is better than anyone else on the team regardless of the amount of special training,
experience or expertise.
This respect requires every team member to recognize the value of each other, while eliminating
ego and any other negativity that could minimize the potential of the high performance ACLS
resuscitation team.