Coordination and teamwork in acute patient care

The process of providing acute patient care is inherently interdisciplinary. In the patient safety literature it has been widely recognized that effective team performance is crucial for providing safe patient care. Many of the factors contributing to adverse events in healthcare originate from flawed teamwork rather than from a lack of clinical skills. This paper provides an overview of key concepts of team research in high-risk industries and current research on adaptive coordination in acute patient care. Recent studies in anesthesia have shown that teams adapt the team structure and coordination process to situational changes in task requirements related to the phase of anesthesia or the occurrence of critical events or non-routine events. This research has the potential to contribute to patient safety through improved training concepts and work-systems design by providing more specific guidance than the mere transfer of results from other high-risk industries.