Team learning, team performance and safe team climate in elder care nursing

This study aims to determine whether elder care nurses engage in knowledge sharing and reflection within their teams and if these team-learning activities influence an elder care nursing team’s performance. Furthermore, the authors investigated the relation between elder care nurses' estimation of the team climate as being safe and team-learning activities.

For this research, a questionnaire survey of 30 elder care nursing teams (N = 30, n = 149) working in 17 different retirement homes was conducted.

Structural equation model showed significant positive relations between knowledge sharing and team performance, and between reflection and knowledge sharing. A safe team climate had a significantly positive influence on reflection.

Little is known about the performance of elder care nursing teams, how to measure team performance in this domain and how performance is influenced by learning activities. This study fills these gaps by providing an insight into the relationship between team-learning activities and team performance. Team performance was measured by the estimation of the team members and by using performance assessments from an independent institution.