Association between Nursing Teamwork and Missed Nursing Care by Nurses at University Teaching and Referral Hospital

Introduction: Nurses serve as a bridge between doctors, patients, and the hospital administration among their roles and thus effective teamwork and collaboration should be mandatory for better service delivery to patients. Focusing on identifying the link between nursing teamwork and missed nursing care will assist healthcare providers in improving the quality of services provided to patients.

Objective: This study aimed to determine the association between level of nursing teamwork and missed nursing care by nurses at the University Teaching and Referral Hospital of Kigali in Rwanda.

Material and Methods: The study was cross-sectional descriptive and correlation design conducted from November-December 2021. This study utilized the census method to obtain participants where all nurses who met inclusion criteria and consented for participation were included in the study. The researcher used Nursing Teamwork survey (NTS) and MISSCARE survey questionnaires for data collection. The data was analyzed using SPSS version 26.0.

Results: The result, χ2 (4, N=201) = 44.18, p≤0.001 revealed that there was statistically significant association between level of nursing teamwork and the level of missed nursing care. The majority (58.70%) perceive that the level of nursing teamwork was moderate. The top three elements of nursing teamwork that nurses perceived to have never occurred were during break staff rarely takes extra time (more than recommended one hour) (47.3%), the team rarely ignores the error of team member instead of having a discussion (42.8%), and if there was a plan to deal with sudden increased workload (39.3%). The level of missed nursing was perceived as moderate by 46.73% of study participants.

Discussion: The findings showed that there was a statistically significant association between nursing teamwork and level of missed nursing care. The level of nursing teamwork and missed nursing care were perceived as moderate. Further analyses showed that the increase in nursing teamwork led to reduction in level of missed nursing care activities.

Conclusions: The study found that the level of nursing teamwork and missed nursing care were perceived as moderate. There was a strong association between nursing teamwork and missed nursing care.

Recommendation: The management of the study setting should consider the improvement of the element of nursing teamwork that has been perceived as never occurring.