INTRODUCTION:
A huddle can be defined as a structured, brief (5-15 minutes), routine
(daily or multiple times a day), face-to-face communication of a team’s
membership.1 Daily healthcare huddles have been
consistently shown to improve patient safety by enhancing teamwork,
creating standardised communication processes, and providing a feeling
of shared responsibility.2-6 A recent systematic
review on the impact of multidisciplinary team huddles on patient safety
published in the BMJ concluded that “the present body of research
related to such huddles demonstrates a generally positive impact on
safety”.7 Despite the evidence on the impact of
huddles on patient outcomes and patient
satisfaction,8-11 there is a dearth of literature on
the impact of huddles on individual healthcare staff, particularly in
relation to job satisfaction and work engagement.
The WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of
Health Personnel states that each country must ‘educate, retain, and
sustain’ an appropriate health workforce.12 However,
in the context of increased pressures on services, organisations can
struggle to attract and retain skilled staff. One of the primary reasons
for this type of ‘brain drain’ is the lack of job satisfaction within
the health care system, which has been attributed to poor working
cultures in organisations and the strong hierarchical nature of
healthcare systems.13 Research has indicated that the
feeling of not having a voice or influencing decisions decreases
engagement, motivation, and wellbeing among medical
staff14 and such environments can result in greater
reported intention to leave. A strong body of evidence has demonstrated
that turnover intention is a reliable indicator of job
dissatisfaction.15,16
Job satisfaction among healthcare professionals is also important
because if their own needs are not met, they often have difficulties in
meeting the needs of their patients.17,18 Job
satisfaction in healthcare workers has been reported to be related to a
number of factors: having autonomy in decision-making, effective
communication among staff and supervisors, and having the ability to
express one’s opinion freely,19 all of which are
potentially facilitated by the implementation of a daily team
huddle.20 Huddle implementation in a healthcare team
has been perceived by staff to increase accountability, create a culture
of collaboration, foster a heightened sense of community, and increase
empowerment, by giving all team members a dedicated time and platform to
discuss concerns.20
Improved communication between team members has been shown to be a
specific intervention that improves interdisciplinary
teamwork.21 Programs such as TeamSTEPPS (Team
Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety), the
Aston Team Facilitation Programme, and ISBAR (identify, situation,
background, assessment, recommendation) are widely used in multiple
healthcare systems to improve team communication.22Thus, it is hypothesised that the implementation of a huddle would
therefore promote teamwork by improving communication between team
members.
We conducted a systematic review on the impact of daily,
multi-disciplinary huddles on healthcare staff. The primary outcomes of
interest were staff satisfaction, teamwork, and work engagement in a
healthcare setting. We are not aware of any other reviews conducted on
these potential outcomes of the huddle in a healthcare setting.