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Measuring how much nursing teams actually collaborate

Rosters record who works when, not who works together, so collaboration stays a slogan.

The problem

Collaboration between nursing teams is treated as important but is rarely measured. Staffing and rostering data record who works when, not who actually works together, so “more collaboration” stays a slogan rather than something you can track, compare, or link to outcomes.

The approach

I developed the Structured Collaboration Index, a method that measures collaboration intensity in multi-team systems directly from scheduling data. It reads ordinary rosters as a measure of how much teams overlap and work together, so workforce research and hospital management have a number to work with instead of a subjective judgement.