STEP and IMSAFE are tools designed to improve which aspect of healthcare?

STEP and IMSAFE are important tools aimed at enhancing situation monitoring, which is crucial in healthcare settings. Situation monitoring refers to the ongoing awareness of elements within the environment that might affect patient care and team performance.

The STEP model provides a framework to gather and analyze pertinent information, including the status of the team and patients, the environment, and any progress towards goals, thereby ensuring that team members maintain situational awareness. Similarly, IMSAFE is a tool to assess an individual's readiness to perform their role based on factors like illness, medication, stress, alcohol, fatigue, and eating. Both of these tools help healthcare professionals stay informed about their surroundings and their own capabilities, which can directly impact patient safety and the effectiveness of team collaboration.

While team cohesion, emergency protocols, and patient engagement are also important aspects of healthcare practices, they are not specifically what STEP and IMSAFE are designed to address. Therefore, these tools are primarily focused on improving situation monitoring within healthcare teams.