Healthcare and teamwork collaboration in clinical settings

Development of the Team

The team was developed to accommodate the needs of a growing organization. Basically we had two people, and then the team grew quickly to a staff of six, as the team became a much higher priority. This has proved to be incredibly valuable to the organization, and gave me an opportunity to basically build a team from scratch, and to create the culture of that team. One of the things that we realized early on as that we needed to structure the need in such a way that the team worked for each other, to help each other out. That way, we felt that we could cover many of the basic advantages of teamwork, such as increased efficiency, a high level of responsiveness to patient needs, and overall effectiveness as wait times were diminished (Ray, 2017).
For example, we were able to take on projects on a team basis, which is one of the main advantages of having a team. Any one individual can become overloaded with work temporarily, so having other people on the team able to step in and help has made the department much more effective, even with the extra workload. From a managerial perspective, this aspect of teamwork makes it easier to divide work evenly, and the entire team takes responsibility for the work, which means that they have to work together and lift each other up. There is even a social aspect to teamwork – people aren\\'t so alienated in their work as when they are constantly working alone, and that matters for morale. Like when the workload is very high, before the team it was always stressful, but with a team together at least you were all in it together, and that helped with morale (Nair, 2016).

Barriers

Teamwork is not without its challenges. One of the interesting things is that even when you think you have a team of like-minded individuals who are committed to team goals, the reality is that there are still sometimes significant differences between people. One thing that was perhaps unexpected was just the way that different people learn things. As it turns out there are people who just process things differently, they learn differently, and so when you\\'re trying to teach or instruct them, you have to understand the approaches that work best and then follow them. In our role in nursing, it\\'s often a matter of people who learn by doing versus people who prefer to learn through verbal training and instruction (Loehr, 2014). One of the barriers you see, in addition to just having to teach people differently, is that when people learn differently, they sometimes have different perspectives of specific things. People who learn by doing are probably more content with failure, because that is a natural part of hands-on learning. This contrasts with people who cannot stand failure, and managers like myself who think that making mistakes on live patients is absolutely unacceptable – one must learn enough to succeed the first time when someone\\'s health in on the line. So something that is as innate as how someone learns new skills can actually prove really challenging in the team environment when it buts up against people who cannot accept that style of learning.

This is in addition to other things, like cultural differences. There are some pretty distinctive differences sometimes between cultures, or even in the same culture between people with completely different backgrounds. One of the things you want your team to do is to be a cohesive unit working towards a common goal, but that is difficult when people have completely different worldviews, styles of working and that sort of thing. Diversity comes in a lot of different forms and can be really challenging.
A big barrier can come in the form of different personality types. These do not always get along, and some are much more likely to conflict that others. It is important for management to understand some of the different personality types, and probably just as important they need to understand what they can do to bring the different personality types together. So integrating different people into the team is really one of the most important parts of building a team – the team isn\\'t a collection of individuals acting as individuals, but individuals who are acting together, to promote the best interest of the team as a whole.

Overcoming Conflict

Teambuilding is really the only way to overcome conflict. I prefer that conflict be avoided, but only if it is genuinely avoided, and not that passive aggressive type of avoidance that is really just \\"cold\\" conflict. It is important that when conflict does arise, that it is dealt with quickly. Team building exercises may sound corny, but they can really work sometimes. It makes sense. Sometimes people come to work and it\\'s all about why they are doing it – for themselves, their families, that sort of thing. If you are working for your family, then you\\'re placing emphasis externally, and have less incentive to engage with the team. But someone who is working for the team – not that they have to forget about their family – but that they have been able to bond and identify with their teammates, is more likely to work harder for team success, than someone who\\'s definition of success at work is focused strictly on external motivators. Team building actually creates that internal team-based motivation that drives a team to work harder for each other.

The other aspect of overcoming conflict is just to meet regularly. The reality is that regular team meetings are an important component of building a great team culture – you have the opportunity to make sure that issues are addressed so as to resolve conflict more quickly, but you also put the team in a position to relate to each other as people, and teammates, rather than just random individuals who work in the same place. So you don\\'t even need team-building exercises to start to form a team culture (Pollack & Frokis, 2017).

Strengths and Weaknesses of Developing a Team

There are a lot of strengths of developing a team. The big one is that teams do tend to outperform groups that don\\'t have that team dynamic. The team dynamic is related to higher levels of efficiency, effectiveness and other performance measures.
One of the big drawbacks of developing a team is that this process can take a long time. There are different personality types, different cultures and these sorts of things can really increase the risk of conflict. This conflict can actually diminish performance. But if the team is developed effectively, there is definitely a lower risk that the team will develop in such negative ways. Furthermore, management should be educated on some things like personalities that will clash so that the warning signs can be spotted early, and addressed as part of the team development process (MindTools, 2015).

One of the advantages of developing a team, though, is that once a team culture has been developed, the team will propagate that culture going forward. The thing is that developing a team that works well can be quite difficult, but once it has been done, the team is likely to perform at a higher level, and that high level can be sustained, as long as the team culture is passed on to new team members. A team\\'s culture can be established and passed along even when none of the original members of that team are still there.


References

Kevany, T. (2015). How To Cultivate a Team Culture. Retrieved from http://www.cose.org/en/News/Press%20Releases/General/How%20to%20Cultivate%20a%20Team%20Culture.aspx

Loehr, A. (2014). 7 Learning Styles to Up Your Management Game. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anne-loehr/use-the-seven-learning-st_b_5844792.html

Mind Tools. (2015). Improving Group Dynamics: Helping Your Team Work More Effectively. Retrieved from https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/improving-group-dynamics.htm

Nair, T. (2016). Developing Positive Team Dynamics in the Workplace is a MUST! Retrieved from http://www.buzzle.com/articles/team-dynamics-in-the-workplace.html

Pollack, S., and Frolkis, J. (2017). Creating Strong Team Culture. Retrieved from https://www.stepsforward.org/modules/create-healthy-team-culture

Ray, L. (2017). The Advantages of Teamwork in Today’s Health Care Organizations. Retrieved from http://work.chron.com/advantages-teamwork-todays-health-care-organizations-5143.html