Conclusion
Teamwork and communication are essential to exceptional patient care in IR. Although every team member knows that teamwork and communication are essential, the theories behind these concepts are not well understood. Team performance depends on shared mental models, which in turn develop from experience working together as a team. Communication occurs in three distinct steps: message encoding, transmission, and decoding. Errors in communication can be mitigated using redundancy, feedback, and simplifying the message understanding the recipient's background. Individual and organizational commitments to actively improve teamwork and communication are essential to form highperformance teams and exceptional health care delivery.