Supporting development efforts of clinical care teams

Abstract

This paper describes the results of a longitudinal study of team communication structure for two distinct interdisciplinary healthcare teams at a large academic children medical centre in the USA. Our goal was to inform teams of opportunities and strategies that strengthen their communication structure. To this purpose we proposed an operational framework based on four steps: observation, measurement, mirroring and design. We analysed the e-mail archives of two teams to monitor structural changes in e-mail communication over one year. Since the first analyses, both teams were designated as strategic priorities by the institution, underwent off site meetings to define and put into execution a strategic plan, initiated processes to improve care delivery and reviewed the results of the initial social network analysis. We found that for both teams the communication network improved over time showing a higher cohesiveness, an increase in density, network resilience and external connectivity.

The impact of virtual mirroring on customer satisfaction

“…The process of looking at ourselves 'in the mirror' is important to create self-awareness, foster generative learning and shape team learning (Kluger & DeNisi 1996). Recent studies illustrated the importance of conducting learning sessions by presenting results of social network analysis to organizational leaders with the potential to trigger a self-organizing feedback loop (Grippa, Gloor, Bucuvalas, & Palazzolo, 2012). These sessions allow members to reflect on their own communication styles, to look at their own areas of improvements, and to perceive themselves under a new perspective.…”

“…Future research should include the calculation of emotionality and complexity of the language used by mining the body of the email. An increasing number of studies have used the email body to assess change management initiatives and team development (Zhang et al 2013;Grippa et al, 2012). For example, Zhang et al (2013) calculated positive and negative sentiment in the e-mail text using a simple "bag-of-words" approach, employing a user-generated mood word list, relevant for the domain area to calculate positivity and negativity of an e-mail's content.…”

“…to organizational leaders with the potential to trigger a self-organizing feedback loop (Grippa, Gloor, Bucuvalas, & Palazzolo, 2012). These sessions allow members to reflect on their own communication styles, to look at their own areas of improvements, and to perceive themselves under a new perspective.…”

“…For example, for call center staff and nurses in a hospital setting, more hierarchical styles lead to better results , while life sciences researchers deliver better results in decentralized collaboration networks (Grippa et al, 2012). In the mirroring process, the communication patterns of individuals and teams are shown to team members, together with information about communication patterns of the most successful individuals and teams (Grippa et al, 2012).…”

Gatekeepers Practices in Knowledge Diffusion within Saudi Organizations: KFMC Case Study

“…Social capital assists in knowledge creation and has positive effects on knowledge sharing among members of organizations [31] [34]. for better understanding of the knowledge flow among the organization network, SNA is an innovative method that makes embedded relations in the organization social network visible to the key mangers [7][35] [36]. SNA is; "The disciplined inquiry into the patterning of relations among social actors, as well as the patterning of relationships among actors at different levels of analysis."…”