Perception of Health Workers towards Teamwork in Jimma Zone Public Hospitals, South West Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: An effective teamwork is now internationally accepted as an essential tool for constructing a more effective and patient-centered health care delivery system. The incorporation of sharing responsibilities with accountability between team members in health care systems offers great benefit. In Ethiopia, however, the issue of health workers perception towards teamwork is given little attention by researchers where many new public hospitals were opened in the recent time. Objective: To determine the level of perception toward teamwork and its predictors among health workers working in jimma Zone public hospitals Oromia regional state, south west Ethiopia, 2018. Methods: Community based cross-sectional study design was employed to determine the level of perception toward teamwork and its predictors among health workers in Jimma Zone six public hospitals. The study included selected health workers who served at least for 6 months in Jimma zone public hospitals. The data was collected from 249 selected health workers computed by using single population proportion formula It was collected using semi-structured selfadministered pre-tested questionnaires of selected health workers from August 13 to September 02, 2018. Data entry and analysis was made using Epi-Data version 3.1 and statistical package for social science version 23 software respectively. Descriptive statistics, binary and multiple variable logistic regression analysis were performed. Finally, variables with a P-values <0.05 were considered as statistically significant at 95% CI. Results: This study finding showed that, 249 health workers were participated with response rate of 249(100 %). Among the total participants 52.6% perceived teamwork positively while 47.4% view teamwork unfavorably. The overall mean perception toward teamwork was 3.59. The most important significant variables on multivariable logistic regression analysis, Type of profession were statistically associated with perception of team work [AOR=0.216 and 95% CI= (0.076, 0.610)]. This implies that professionally midwifery health workers were 0.216 times less likely to had negative perception than those who had medical doctors. Work experience were statistically associated with perception of team work [AOR=1.357and 95% CI= (1.067, 1.888)]. This implies that health workers who had greater than 12 years’ work experience were 1.357times less likely to had negative perception than those who had work experience less than 2 years Conclusion: This study found that significant numbers of the health workers perceived teamwork unfavorably. There was poor practice on the core components of teamwork. This in turn implies that collaborative practice can improve health service delivery but different perception of teamwork negatively affected the interest of health workers to implement it. Hence, there should be a collaborative work to the implementation of policy and strategies that enables hospitals to better practice teamwork approach and to enhance interdisciplinary support for effective and patient-centered health service delivery.