Utilizing Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS) to Improve Ineffective Communication in Long-Term Care Settings

Ineffective communication remains a major factor contributing to medical errors and sentinel events in health care that lead to fatalities and billions in malpractice cost. Nurses have a leading role in communicating valuable patient information to maintain patient safety. In the long-term care setting, ineffective communication and poor teamwork have been found to be contributing factors to 89% of adverse events, such as medication errors, delayed or inappropriate interventions and missed nursing care.