Communication and Teamwork in Healthcare: Key Factors for High-Quality Patient Care
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Effective communication and cohesive teamwork are foundational determinants of safe, high-quality patient care, yet communication failures remain among the most frequently cited contributing causes of sentinel events and adverse outcomes worldwide. This paper examines the theoretical and empirical foundations of interprofessional communication and teamwork in healthcare settings, drawing on Donabedian's structure-process-outcome model, Reason's Swiss cheese model of error causation, the Team STEPPS framework, and the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) competency domains. The paper situates these concepts within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 healthcare transformation agenda and its regulatory architecture, including the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties (SCFHS), the Saudi Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI), the Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA), the Nphies claims and eligibility platform, and the Mumaris+ professional registration system. Building on this foundation, the paper proposes the BRIDGE framework—Briefings, Respect, Information-sharing, Debriefing, Goal-alignment, and Escalation—as an integrative model for strengthening communication and teamwork at the point of care. Barriers to implementation, including hierarchical culture, workforce diversity and language variation, workload pressures, and fragmented documentation systems, are examined alongside evidence-based strategies for improvement. The paper concludes that sustained investment in structured communication tools, psychological safety, and interprofessional training is essential to achieving the quality and safety outcomes envisioned under Saudi Arabia's healthcare transformation program
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