Impacts of Huddle Intervention on the Patient Safety Culture of Medical Team Members in Medical Ward: One-Group Pretest-Posttest Design

Abstract

Objective

A huddle is a short, regular meetings to discuss existing or emerging patient safety issues. Hospital administrators can encourage healthcare staff to voluntarily examine the potential occurrence and severity of risks, thereby enhancing awareness of patient safety. The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of huddle intervention on patient safety culture among medical team members and related factors.

Methods

We used a one-group pretest-posttest research design and convenience sampled 109 members of the general internal medicine ward team members from a medical center in central Taiwan. They participated 2 times per week in 15-min huddles from 08:15 to 08:30 in the morning, which lasted for a total of 4 weeks. The process was based on submitted ideas, approved ideas, research ideas and standardization, and data on the safety attitudes questionnaire (SAQ) were collected during the huddles’ intervention pretest and posttest.

Results

After the huddle intervention, we found significantly improved scores for safety attitude, teamwork climate (76.49±16.13 vs 83.26±13.39, p < 0.001), safety climate (75.07±16.07 vs 82.63±13.72, p < 0.001), job satisfaction (73.67±19.84 vs 83.39±17.21, p < 0.001), perceptions of management (77.87±19.99 vs 84.86±16.03, p < 0.001) and working conditions (78.96±18.16 vs 86.18±14.90, p < 0.001). Correlation analyses on the differences between pretest and posttest showed that age had a significant correlation with safety climate (r = 0.22, p = 0.022) and working conditions (r = 0.20, p = 0.035). The number of times to participate in a huddle had a significant correlation with teamwork climate (r = 0.33, p =<.001), safety climate (r = 0.30, p = 0.002), job satisfaction (r = 0.19, p = 0.043), and work conditions (r = 0.28, p = 0.003).

Conclusion

Huddles improve clinical team members’ understanding of different dimensions and relate factors of safety attitudes. Implementation of the huddles involved standardized process will help hospital administrators understand the steps to parallel expansion to other wards.

Keywords:

• huddle
• patient safety
• patient care team

Data Sharing Statement

All data are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.

Ethical Approval

The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Taichung Veterans General Hospital. This study was conducted in accordance with the World Medical Association (WMA) Declaration of Helsinki. Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the team members participating in this study at Taichung Veterans General Hospital. The source of reference for the research questionnaire is the Joint Commission of Taiwan. The Taiwan Patient Safety Culture (TPSC) questionnaire is a national safety cultural network survey system built by reference to the internationally credible Safety Attitude Questionnaire (SAQ) cultural survey tool. The interpretations and conclusions made in this article do not represent the position of the Joint Commission of Taiwan.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

Additional information

Funding

This study has not received any external funding.