As our organization continues to grow, interaction and effective communication and information sharing among colleagues is key. With more than 22,000 faculty and staff across Gainesville and Jacksonville, collaboration groups on the Bridge are a crucial resource for cross-disciplinary work.

Collaboration groups ensure resources and files are in a central location and accessible to those who need access. They allow for discussions among members and comments can be tagged to specific documents to simplify the review process.

The UF Health Acute Care Surgery team uses the Bridge collaboration tools to support staffing, learning and patient care.

“Our division has benefited from using the Bridge collaboration group by always having access to schedules, assigned readings and other resources that are useful,” said Ada Malcolm, UF Health Acute Care Surgery administrative specialist and administrator for her team’s Bridge group. “Using the group helps us improve patient care by ensuring we are appropriately staffed and our staff is educated properly.”

Meanwhile, Jeff Stevens, UF Health Web Services assistant manager, said, “I particularly like the ability for us to share documents and files across the system, especially if I’m working with people from different units. I’m in the Web Services Bridge collaboration group at least two or three times a day.”

Each group page includes five features — Home, Forum, Files, Events and Links. There are several ways to use each item, and group administrators can adapt them to benefit the department, division or team in question.

“Our UF Health Communications teams are integrated and include staff employed by both UF and UF Health Shands,” said Kim Rose, UF Health Strategic Communications director. “We’ve been using a Bridge collaboration/discussion group from the beginning, the same way we used to use the ‘share drive’ so that everyone can have the same resources no matter what and can access them from anywhere.”

Although sharing information within Bridge groups is easy, users are reminded before submitting a group request form that protected personal health information, or PHI, or confidential business information cannot be posted on the Bridge in these groups. For regular collaboration and routine information sharing, however, a group is an ideal solution.

If you think creating a Bridge collaboration group will benefit your team, visit the Bridge, click the “Collaboration” tab and then the “Request a Group” button — or click the “Groups” tab at the top right of the page and select “Request New.” Feedback is always encouraged, so please send comments about your Bridge group to Stevens at jstevens@ufl.edu.