Group - Answers two or more people with common interests, objectives, and continuing
interaction
Nursing Teams - Answers - patient care teams
- unit function teams
- research teams
- quality improvement teams
Patient care teams - Answers A group of patient care personnel including registered nurses,
licensed practical nurses, and unlicensed assistive personnel, that work together to provide
nursing care to a group of patients
Unit function teams - Answers usually comprised of all nursing personnel on a patient care unit,
these groups meet to discuss and solve issues that address the procedures and routines that
become official unit rules and regulations
Research teams - Answers a research team meets to conduct or participate in studies that
provide the best evidence based practice on a unit, or in the facility at large
Quality improvement teams - Answers groups of healthcare professionals that meet to discuss
and adopt best practices for improving the care of patients within a facility
Characteristics of a well-functioning group - Answers - aware of objectives and ground rules
- consensus decision-making
- conflict centers around ideas or methods, not people
- clear assignments made and accepted
Characteristics of a poorly-functioning group - Answers - unaware or confused about the
objectives or how the group will conduct work
- conflict focuses on people within the group
- decisions are made unilaterally or predetermined
- no clear assignments are given to implement decision
Benefits of groups - Answers - can address more complicated, voluminous work
- uses diversity of talents, experience, and knowledge of various members (widened
perspectives)
, - promote morale, ownership, and empowerment
- improves quality of product, outcomes, and decisions
Concepts of effective group work - Answers - group cohesion
- loss of individuality
- encourage participation
- refocusing conflict
- empowerment
- ownership
- redefining objectives
- summarizing
Group cohesion - Answers the extent to which members of the group feel interpersonally
connected to each other
Loss of individuality - Answers social process in which individual group members lose self-
awareness and its accompanying sense of accountability, inhibition, and responsibility for
individual behavior; results in personal attacks, rude comments, and ineffective group work
Encouraging participation - Answers monitoring relative participation levels of the members of a
group; limit over-participation and encourage those who are under-participating
Refocusing conflict - Answers recentering the discussion on the problem, issue, or decision, and
OFF the person; needs to happen quickly when conflict arises
Summarizing - Answers ensuring main points are restated or clarified at the conclusion of a
meeting
Empowerment - Answers providing members of a group with responsibility to make decisions
that affect them directly and to provide the means to implement those decisions; encourages
group cohesion
Promoting empowerment - Answers let the group determine the objectives and rules of the
group and actually implement the decision
Culture (Textbook definition) - Answers the learned and shared beliefs, values, norms, and
traditions of a particular group, which guide our thinking, decisions, and actions
Culture (Cedarville SON definition) - Answers the shared set of values, beliefs, norms, role
expectations, and social structures that produces a patterned, common way of life; nursing care