Total Quality Management In Healthcare

This chapter provides a review of the literature that has studied related topics to the concepts of Total Quality Management (TQM) and Teamwork among healthcare environment. The literature review included a search of multiple databases: Science direct, Pubmed, Google scholar and Wiley online library. The keywords utilized in the search engines were: Total quality management, teamwork, teamwork in healthcare and teamwork improvement.

Organizations all over the world have to use different techniques for quality improvement. TQM is one of the competitive strategies that are widely used within organizations for improving quality and achieving success. The concept of TQM was developed in the late of 1940s and 1960s in Japan after the Second World

Customer here is the patient who receives health services and the fulfillment of patient's needs and satisfaction is the ultimate goal in any healthcare organization. Continuous improvement is the next logical step to maintain patient's satisfaction using the most efficient and effective methods (Ojha, 2000). Continuous process improvement, the second necessary ingredient for the success of TQM, entails the recognition of small incremental and sustainable improvements over a long term in order to accomplish large gains toward the goal of total quality. This concept necessitates the willingness of managers to invest in the present for benefits that manifest themselves in the future by regular cycles of planning, execution and evolution (Ramesh, 2013). Finally, teamwork is essential in order to experience continuous improvement where everyone involved in the team tries to identify opportunities for improvement and works together to implement the necessary changes. Other principles of TQM like process management, employee involvement and empowerment, learning and internal and external cooperation are all related to these principles (Ojha, 2000). When members work together effectively the team tend to be more productive and less stressed, make fewer errors and the quality of care they deliver will be higher (Kalsich et.al,

The findings showed small relationship between leadership and resources, small relationship between vision and momentum, small relationship between teamwork and momentum, moderate relationship between momentum and focus, moderate relationship between focus and outcomes, strong relationship between resources and momentum, strong influence of resources on training in addition to a strong influence of momentum on outcomes. In other words, teamwork indirectly influences outcomes through focus and momentum. This study suggests placing efforts to encourage teamwork in order to facilitate success.

Teamwork among patient care teams has positive effect on the quality of care delivered to patients, caregiver’s satisfaction, error reduction and safety. Given its importance, it is necessary to better understand the factors that influence the success of teamwork and the behaviors that comprise teamwork as well as the impact of teamwork of on healthcare outcomes in order to seek improvement