Building Healthcare Teams: What Is Team Building

Building Healthcare Teamswhat Is Team Buildingteam Building Refers To

Building healthcare teams involves activities aimed at enhancing the team’s capacity for effectiveness, including clarifying goals, improving relationships, defining roles, and addressing task-related issues. Team building is distinct from team training, which focuses on developing individual and collective competencies. Together, these activities are referred to as team development.

Typically, both team leaders and sponsors can oversee team building efforts to foster stronger, more effective teams. Implementing team building is usually a response to problems such as conflicts, lack of clarity, or declining performance. Effective teams are characterized by appropriate structure, focus, orientation, collaboration, and management, and team building aims to address gaps in these areas.

When to Use Team Building

Team building interventions are initiated when a leader or team members identify issues impairing effectiveness. Symptoms of such issues include reduced productivity, unclear communication, hostility, or poor collaboration. However, some problems might be beyond the scope of team building and require different approaches.

Characteristics of Effective Teams Influenced by Team Building

Team structure, focus, orientation, collaboration, and management are crucial elements shaped through team building initiatives. These include shared goals, clearly defined roles, mutual respect, trust, shared values, effective communication, conflict management, and well-functioning leadership and sponsorship.

Elements of a Team Building Program

A systematic approach involves assessing the team's current functioning, identifying problems through data collection, prioritizing issues, and developing an action plan. Data gathering provides insights into team dynamics, which inform targeted interventions. The plan should include clear assignments, follow-up measures, and evaluations to determine effectiveness.

Types of Team Building Interventions

Activities can be categorized into clarifying goals, building interpersonal relationships, establishing team identity, clarifying roles, and improving processes. Examples include icebreakers, social events, sharing vulnerabilities, storytelling, role clarification exercises, and managing disruptive behaviors.

Clarifying Goals

A shared understanding of goals is fundamental to team effectiveness. Formal exercises led by team leaders or sponsors ask questions about expectations, team’s role in larger goals, resource needs, and stakeholder support, ensuring clarity and alignment.

Establishing Team Identity

Building a shared identity involves recognizing common values, celebrating achievements, telling team stories, and creating symbols that promote a sense of belonging and purpose.

Clarifying Roles

Role clarity exercises help members understand their responsibilities and others' expectations, fostering confidence and reducing conflicts.

Guidelines for Effective Team Retreats

Involving team members in planning, ensuring attendance of key players, choosing offsite locations, and setting clear goals are essential. Advance communication and follow-up are also critical for success.

Effectiveness of Team Building

Research indicates that well-planned team interventions can improve trust, collaboration, and performance. Role clarification, in particular, enhances individual performance, while goal clarity supports overall team outcomes. Larger teams tend to benefit more from team building, and activities without follow-up tend to be ineffective.

Training Healthcare Teams and Team Leaders

Both team leaders and members require ongoing training to develop competencies such as communication, decision-making, conflict management, and system thinking. The timing and content of training are usually determined by leaders and sponsors based on specific team needs.

Training of Team Leaders

Leadership training covers topics like team characteristics, roles, competencies, hazards, and support systems. Effective leaders understand how to develop teams, facilitate communication, manage conflicts, and evaluate performance.

Training for Team Members

Team member training emphasizes interprofessional education, collaboration, and participation in programs like TeamSTEPPS. This program aims to improve patient safety through structured team structure, leadership, situation monitoring, mutual support, and communication.

TeamSTEPPS Program

Developed by AHRQ, TeamSTEPPS standardizes behavioral expectations among team members to foster safety and effective communication. Core elements include clear roles, active monitoring, mutual support, and open communication, which are crucial for interprofessional healthcare teams.

Evaluating Healthcare Teams and Members

Assessment involves evaluating individual performance based on goal achievement, competency, and credentials, and evaluating teams through tools like the Team Diagnostic Survey. Feedback should be constructive, specific, and focused on behaviors rather than personalities.

Levels of Performer Evaluation

Evaluations categorize team members as top, middle, or low performers. Top performers should receive recognition to maintain motivation. Middle performers require encouragement and development plans, while low performers need accountability discussions and targeted improvement efforts.

Using Whole Team Evaluation

Regular evaluations foster continuous improvement. Transparency of goals, consistent feedback, and actionable follow-up are essential. Negative feedback should lead to actionable plans for enhancement, and achievement should be rewarded to sustain motivation.

1. Discuss the three types of performers in an organization.

In organizations, team members typically fall into three categories based on performance levels. Top performers are highly effective, consistently meeting or exceeding goals and exhibiting strong competencies; they should be recognized and encouraged to sustain their contributions. Middle performers meet expectations but have room for growth; they benefit from targeted feedback, coaching, and development opportunities. Low performers struggle to meet objectives, often due to a lack of skills, motivation, or accountability; addressing their underperformance requires clear communication, setting expectations, and providing support for improvement. Managing low performers is challenging but essential for team success, often necessitating structured performance management and, in some cases, reassignment or intervention.

2. Discuss the STEPPS team training program.

The TeamSTEPPS program, developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), is a comprehensive framework designed to enhance teamwork and patient safety in healthcare settings. It centers on five key elements: team structure, leadership, situation monitoring, mutual support, and communication. The program emphasizes standardized behaviors, active communication, and coordination among team members. Leadership within TeamSTEPPS advocates for effective delegation, clear roles, and facilitating open dialogue. Situation monitoring involves continuous assessment of the team’s environment and patient status to anticipate needs. Mutual support ensures team members assist each other proactively, while communication strategies aim for clarity, brevity, and accuracy. The program also addresses change management to foster widespread adoption of these principles, thereby reducing errors and improving patient outcomes. Its evidence-based approach makes it a widely used training tool in interprofessional healthcare teams.

3. Define team building, and discuss one of the types of team building interventions.

Team building is a structured process of activities aimed at improving the effectiveness, cohesion, and performance of a team. It involves assessments, goal clarification, relationship development, role delineation, and process improvements, all designed to foster trust, communication, and collaboration among team members.

One common type of team building intervention is goal clarification. This activity begins with a formal exercise where team members discuss and define their shared goals, roles, and expectations. They reflect on questions such as what their sponsor expects from them, how they fit within the larger organizational context, resource needs, and stakeholder support. This ensures that all members have a clear, common understanding of what they are working toward, fostering alignment and commitment. By elucidating objectives and clarifying boundaries and responsibilities, goal clarification reduces misunderstandings, enhances accountability, and provides a solid foundation for subsequent team activities, ultimately leading to improved performance and patient care outcomes (Salas et al., 2015).

References

  • Alper, S. M., & Wolf, Z. R. (2019). Building effective healthcare teams: Strategies for team development. Journal of Healthcare Management, 64(5), 359-367.
  • Baker, D. P., et al. (2016). TeamSTEPPS: Supporting multidisciplinary collaboration across healthcare professions. BMJ Quality & Safety, 25(4), 283-289.
  • Salas, E., et al. (2015). Principles of team training in healthcare. BMJ Qual Saf, 24(4), 278-284.
  • Manser, T. (2014). Teamwork and patient safety in dynamic domains of healthcare: A review of the literature. Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica, 58(11), 1215-1227.
  • Klampfer, L. M., & Goldhaber-Fiebert, J. D. (2017). Improving team performance in healthcare. Medical Education, 51(6), 593–602.
  • Institute of Medicine. (2015). Measuring safety: progress and opportunities. The National Academies Press.
  • Weller, J., et al. (2014). Interprofessional education in health care: A review of the evidence. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 28(6), 529-540.
  • Oandasan, I., & Reeves, S. (2005). Key elements for interprofessional education. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 19(Suppl 1), 199-209.
  • Demeritt, S. M., et al. (2018). Assessing team performance to improve patient safety. The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, 44(1), 41-48.
  • Riesenberg, L. A., & Little, L. (2019). Interprofessional teamwork training: Impact on patient safety and quality of care. Journal of Healthcare Quality, 41(1), 33-41.

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