Toolkit to improve team collaboration
The King's Fund has developed a toolkit with Future-Focused Finance to overcome barriers between clinical and finance teams. Crossing professional boundaries - a toolkit for collaborative teamwork is free to NHS organisations.
The toolkit is a seven-step process to enable cross-functional teams to reflect on how they work together. Piloted by 17 NHS organisations, an independent evaluation by CIPFA demonstrated an improvement in teamwork between clinical and finance teams, and consequently better outcomes for patients.
Professor Michael West of The King’s Fund, has spent much of his recent career considering cross-boundary teamwork, particularly in the NHS. “Healthy working relationships are critical to an organisation’s ability to create a culture in which teamwork can thrive, in order to deliver better patient care within the resources available.”
Dr Sanjay Agrawal, a Consultant at University of Leicester Hospitals, is the lead for Future-Focused Finance. “Most teams in the NHS do not take the time to stop and reflect. But it’s a basic requirement of well-functioning teams – especially when members come from different professional backgrounds. As a working clinician, I know how hard it can be to get clinicians and finance teams working effectively together. I am delighted that we have been able to produce something that has been shown to make a genuine difference to teamwork on the frontline.”
Judith Muir, a Matron at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS FT says: “The Toolkit has allowed us to reflect on the jargon that each of us uses in our daily work. Our finance staff have certainly got better at explaining things in more user-friendly language. Because we now understand each other better, I was able to work with my finance colleagues to justify the investment in some equipment which considerably improved the patient experience and shortened their length of stay.”