STRATEGIES FOR BUILDING CONSENSUS IN HEALTHCARE 2

Strategies for Building Consensus in Healthcare Teams

Healthcare professionals regularly work as teams to deliver high quality services to
patients. These services are characterized by achievement of desired patient outcomes and
high levels of patient satisfaction. As an Advanced Practice Nurse (APN) leader, building an
effective team requires building consensus and creating an environment that is conducive for
collaborative work. To build consensus, especially when the issues at hand are divisive, there
are a number of strategies that an APN leader can use. These strategies include having open
discussions, taking note of any underlying concerns of members, developing different
proposals, and holding deliberations to choose the best proposal to address a given a problem.
Having open discussion on a divisive issue allows all members of a team to express
their views about the issue. It is important that ideas are solicited from every member rather
than allowing only the most vocal ones to make contributions. Once the problem has been
thoroughly understood and discussed, the APN leader should request for various proposals to
address it and also note the concerns of members.
All proposals provided by members should be treated with respect and written down
for further discussion. Members should then be allowed to review the different proposals,
noting their strengths and weaknesses. They then choose the proposal that is agreeable to most
members. A few modifications are then made to the chosen proposal to address any concerns
that some members may have about the chosen proposal.
At the core of these strategies is conscious effort to involve all members in decision-
making so as to achieve high buy-in from members on the final decision. Using these
strategies, it is relatively easy for APN leaders to achieve consensus in healthcare teams.