Mohammad Taha, MSN, APRN, AGCNS-BC, Winship Cancer Institute, Atlanta, Georgia, discusses the effect implementing daily interprofessional collaboration (IPC) huddles had on communication, nursing confidence, and patient safety in a head and neck cancer inpatient unit. 

These results were first presented at the 2025 Oncology Nursing Society (ONS) Congress in Denver, Colorado. 

Transcript: 

Hello, my name is Mohammad Taha, I'm a clinical nurse specialist with Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, Georgia. My specialty is head and neck cancer, mainly surgical oncology, and the topic that I'm discussing today is navigating change, implementing interprofessional collaboration [IPC] huddles to improve patient outcomes in head and neck cancer surgery. 

As for the objectives, the objectives are to understand the role of IPC huddles in improving interprofessional collaboration and communication, recognize the impact on nursing confidence, decision-making, and patient safety, and finally, to assess the effectiveness of IPC or interprofessional collaboration huddles through pre- and post-implementation survey results. 

As for background and significance, head and neck cancer care requires multidisciplinary coordination due to complex surgical and postoperative needs. The new inpatient unit lacked structured communication which led to communication breakdowns, delayed identification of adverse events, and eventually led to a low team morale. Pre-implementation survey results nurses have felt uninformed about patient care and lack of structured handoff led to missed concerns. 

As for the purpose, the purpose of the project was to evaluate the impact of daily IPC huddles in improving communication among the interdisciplinary team, enhancing nursing confidence in managing patient conditions and finally addressing patient safety concerns proactively for the interventions. 

The intervention was pretty simple, which is daily, 10-minute IPC huddles at 10:00 AM were started on the floor that is specialized in head and neck cancer surgery. The participants were nurses, advanced practice providers, physicians, pharmacists, physical therapists, and social workers. The key discussion points during the huddles were patient condition updates, identification of potential complications, and concerns raised by the team–mainly the nurses and potentially other team members. 

Evaluation method, pre- and post-implementation surveys assessed changes in communication, nursing knowledge, and perceptions of patient safety. These interventions led to really great results where in pre-implementation findings, only 5 nurses felt uninformed about patient conditions. Only 1 nurse believed communication was effective, and 16 nurses felt their concerns were ignored. Post-implementation findings, 100% of the nurses reported feeling informed. All nurses noted improved communication, 15 nurses felt their concerns were addressed compared to 4 nurses in the pre-implementation phase, and 19 nurses believed that IPC huddles improved patient care compared to only 9 before. 

This will lead us to the discussion, where daily IPC huddles significantly improved nurse-provider communication, nursing confidence in managing patient concerns, and finally, team collaboration and increased nurse participation in decision-making resulted in more proactive identification of complications, improved escalation of patient safety concern, and of course, with these points, we found out that the results of the surgery were actually better than before, where the nurses were able to find and catch the complications before it got even worse. 

For future research, we need to look for how IPC huddles can be applied to other oncology units, measuring long-term effects such as reduced complications and readmissions. The next steps are finding a sustainability plan, incorporating IPC huddles into standard workflow, and ensuring leadership support for continued implementation and extend IPC huddles to other inpatient oncology units where we investigate real-time documentation tools to track huddle discussions and patient outcomes.

Source: 

Taha M. Enhancing interprofessional collaboration to improve outcomes in a head and neck cancer inpatient unit through IPC huddles. Presented at the ONS Congress. April 10-13, 2025; Denver, CO.