ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on cross-checking as an elemental team process, rather than as a routinized or required monitoring task. Collaborative cross-checking and other team processes emerged and prospered for over three years. Despite various obstacles, the Cardiac Surgery Care Team launched their collaborative rounding process in the fall of 1999. The Collaborative Communication Cycle is a team briefing and debriefing process that begins when team members assemble with family members around the patient's bed. An important feature of the collaborative rounds process was how it served the development of overlapping role and task knowledge among team members. The surgeon who had been instrumental to the success of the collaborative rounding model subsequently joined another organization to continue research and support for collaborative practice and the practice of collaborative rounding. Despite both measured and perceived benefits to patients and providers, and national recognition for the hospital, the Collaborative Practice Model developed by the Cardiac Surgery Care Team was ultimately suspended.