Promoting Team Bonding/Spirit on a Unit/Floor

Nurses General Nursing

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I know we have several impressive leaders in our midst.So questions to you, how do you create team-bonding on a unit.What are the things you can do, to make your unit/floor appealing to work on?

You know that exudes that great work atmosphere that makes everyone want to work there and in turn reflect on the patients in a positive way.

Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

I was fortunate to work with a great leader and here is what she did:

1. Self-scheduling (with parameters of course).

2. Baby photo contest where you brought in pics of yourself (the staff) and the rest of the staff had to guess who was who.

3. Encouraged monthly potlucks.

4. When new staff would come, she would put up pics of the person and the person would write some personal stuff: like what they liked to do outside of work, what type of experience they had, etc..

Thats all I can remember at the moment.

Specializes in M/S, MICU, CVICU, SICU, ER, Trauma, NICU.

Monthly potlucks!!!!!! We have such a good time =)

Specializes in trauma, ortho, burns, plastic surgery.

To create a team bounding first you need to create a TEAM. A team is build in time and could be destroyed fast by bad decisions.

First starts with hiring process... you hired bad people you have bad ones, you keep bad people, you will have bad ones, finally you will have a bad team.....very hard to be changed or educated after....

A team has a goal, always. Be sure that you have the same goal with all others team members. Bounding just came, you don't need to do nothing more, Special! The same values ...boundig just come...

The worst ever is to be beetwen teams, lol.

Choose your team wise and if you don't belong, just go! Go and found your team, or build one, where people are happy, you are happy, and all of you work happy for the same goal, because all of you share the same values, is easy!

Some really helpful suggestions. I especially like the potluck and putting pics up idea.

We feature an employee every month and we do a bulletin board about them with their likes and dislikes.

Most of the staff have a habit of bringing in a snack for staff every once in awhile.

Specializes in Acute Care, Rehab, Palliative.

Where I work there is a real team atmosphere. Although each nurse has an assignment we all take responsibility for the whole floor. No one gets left behind when it comes to your work load.If you need help you ask for it and get it. if you are not busy you circulate and offer help.We get together outside of work and on the floor we generally have a good time.We still laugh even when we are busy. We adopt a family for Christmas instead of doing a gift exchange and we do pot luck at work at least once a month( everyone working say, day shift on a Sunday will bring stuff to share for luch or we will all order in Chinese).

As a previous poster said, you hire the right people and those that disrupt the team are spoken to or gotten rid of.

We use Great Team Cards as a team building tool. The cards are used to thank fellow coworkers for going above and beyond their normal duties and helping each other out. During our monthly meetings a few cards that originate from our department are read aloud so everyone can hear about the good deads. These cards are typically only a couple sentances and are filled out using a form on our intranet which is available to all employees. I always print mine out and tuck them away in my fluffer file so I can brag about myself during review time.

Specializes in NICU.
Where I work there is a real team atmosphere. Although each nurse has an assignment we all take responsibility for the whole floor. No one gets left behind when it comes to your work load.If you need help you ask for it and get it. if you are not busy you circulate and offer help.We get together outside of work and on the floor we generally have a good time.We still laugh even when we are busy. We adopt a family for Christmas instead of doing a gift exchange and we do pot luck at work at least once a month( everyone working say, day shift on a Sunday will bring stuff to share for luch or we will all order in Chinese).

As a previous poster said, you hire the right people and those that disrupt the team are spoken to or gotten rid of.

Same here! Normally if you need help, there's people around who don't even wait to be asked....they just jump in and do whatever needs doing and then they get the same in return from me. We have great teamwork the majority of the time. Even on really busy days we seems to have a good time, laughing and joking with one another. We have pot lucks and parties as well at every holiday plus just random ones. I don't know how you start it all once you have a set group of people but I was hired 2 years ago and pretty much from day one felt included, not shunned for being a newbie. Because of the teamwork environment and the people we have, it seems we have an extremely low turnover rate and everyone stays forever. Which I guess is one reason why everyone works well together...we have just gotten to know each other. Maybe it just stems from hiring a great group of people from the very beginning. Oh and we have cards we give out when someone helps or goes above and beyond and you can turn them in for movies tickets, massages and such so that's definitely an incentive for people to pitch in and help :)

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