Association Between Team Skills and Nursing Team Performance: A Malaysian Perspective

Abstract

Objective: Nursing team performance is essential because nurses work interdependently with others and their routines require them to create an effective synergy through collective effort. Nursing teams must be effective in order to reduce medical errors and deliver the best safe care to patients. For that reason, members must possess skills that are relevant and imperative to team functioning. This article aims to examine the association between team skills and team performance. Team performance is categorized into two dimensions; team task performance and team contextual performance. Methods: This study was done on selected nursing teams in Peninsular Malaysia. Data was collected from 1436 individual nurses and responses were aggregated to 300 teams from seven major specialist public hospitals in Peninsular Malaysia. Analysis was done via structural equation modeling using Partial Least Squares (PLS). Results: Results indicated that team skills positively relate to both dimensions of team performance.  The findings of this study support previous studies which posit that team members often display team performance behaviors when they perceive that they are collectively competent in task accomplishments.