What Happens When Teamwork Evolves? The Utility of Teaming in Healthcare
Background
Teamwork is an essential component of effective healthcare. Relying on members of the team, including yourself, to collaborate effectively is what makes healthcare work. It would be impossible for any one person to manage all the intricate details that are involved in patient care. As training becomes increasingly siloed, it is imperative to understand what expertise we, as trainees and as providers, bring to the table. Perhaps even more importantly, we must understand what others are bringing to the table.
Understanding team dynamics is a complicated process. When thinking about the structures of a team, there are several helpful frameworks. Much of healthcare involves template teams (Olson et al., 2020), which involve established roles being filled by different people every day. While this structure works well when team roles and responsibilities are well-defined, it can be a challenge if team members don’t have a firm grasp on everyone’s assigned tasks. Interprofessional education aims to address this challenge by helping students learn more about various training programs to bridge these gaps.
Topic Information
One of the newer topics that has emerged in the field of teamwork and leadership is the concept of “teaming.” This term reframes the idea of teamwork, changing the word from a noun to a verb and supporting the idea that working on a team involves active and intentional participation. In her TED Talk on the topic, Amy Edmondson describes the collaboration required for successful teaming. As students in the middle of our interprofessional training, there are a few characteristics to successful teaming that stand out: diversity, curiosity, and humility.
Compiling a team of diverse individuals–diverse in background, identity, expertise, and ability–is beneficial for everyone. Not only does a diverse team cultivate a sense of inclusion for team members, but in the context of healthcare it also improves patient outcomes. Specifically, teams with a variety of perspectives are associated with more accurate diagnoses, higher patient satisfaction, and increased patient adherence to treatment plans (Gomez & Bernet, 2019). Diverse minds ignite breakthroughs, and teams with varied expertise approach challenges from multiple angles. Put together, diversity can allow for innovative solutions as well as more comprehensive and nuanced patient-care discussions.
This same spirit of embracing diversity extends to maintaining a sense of curiosity about other members of the team. As students, we’re often so focused on learning about our own field that the thought of learning about other healthcare professions can feel insurmountable, making it challenging to maintain curiosity during school. However, embracing small moments or opportunities to learn alongside our peers can be viewed as a refreshing break from our own educational focus. By fostering this curiosity and openness to learning from others, we can build stronger interprofessional relationships that ultimately enhance patient care.
Alongside diversity and curiosity, one of the best traits exemplified by team members is humility. Self-awareness of one’s own strengths and weaknesses is an incredible asset to a team. Healthcare has historically been a hierarchical field, and the power differential created through this hierarchy can make it difficult for team members to be trusting and vulnerable with one another. Without this foundation in trust, teaming can collapse. By acknowledging both our capabilities and limitations, we can cultivate humility and create an environment where effective collaboration can flourish.
Conclusion
In healthcare, teamwork is the driver of success. Every role matters, and it’s only by working together that we can deliver proper patient care. While healthcare teams often have specific roles laid out, obstacles are bound to arise. That's where the idea of "teaming" comes in. Teaming is all about actively jumping in and being part of the team effort. To make this work well, a few key characteristics should be present: diversity, curiosity, and humility. When we embrace these traits, we don’t just work together—we create a culture of collaboration.
References
Olson APJ, Durning SJ, Fernandez Branson C, Sick B, Lane KP, Rencic JJ. Teamwork in clinical reasoning - cooperative or parallel play? Diagnosis (Berl). 2020 Aug 27;7(3):307-312. doi: 10.1515/dx-2020-0020. PMID: 32697754.
Gomez LE, Bernet P. Diversity improves performance and outcomes. J Natl Med Assoc. 2019 Aug;111(4):383-392. doi: 10.1016/j.jnma.2019.01.006. Epub 2019 Feb 11. PMID: 30765101.