Development of Health Care Teams

00:00 Let's talk a little bit about how teams come into being.

00:05 There's going to be a stage process of how this gets accomplished and how they come together to have a unified approach to taking care of patients.

00:15 The first step is going to be forming.

00:17 So, in this stage, team members maybe a little reticent, they maybe a little guarded, their interactions with each other maybe superficial and impersonal.

00:27 They're really not sure, you know, what their task is going to be and how they have a shared vision of that task.

00:34 The next is stage of storming. So, there may actually be conflict between team members as they try to negotiate how things should be done, disagreement about tasks assignments, frustration perhaps with the lack of progress in completing a task.

00:50 As they get to work together, there might be a process of norming.

00:54 So, where they sort of get used to working with each other, they openly communicate, they figure out generally accepted procedures, the communication patterns that are going to work for them, and they are working towards that goal of accomplishing the task.

01:10 And then hopefully at the end, there's a well-functioning team that is performing.

01:14 So the team is closed, they are supportive, they're open, they're trusting, they can share, you know, any kind of disagreements in a collegial way.

01:23 They can be resourceful in terms of helping team members out and they all become effective in focusing the attention on achieving the team's goals.

01:36 So, to accomplish that, I have to give how all this stage process of creating the team what are going to be the qualities of an effective healthcare team.

01:45 The first and foremost is that they have this shared vision of a common purpose.

01:49 And as we've been saying continually, this is idea of patient well-being that they're all working towards that goal.

01:57 They set for themselves measurable goals.

01:59 So, there is going to be a quality improvement process where they set a goal and see if they have accomplished it and then can, you know, if they had accomplished it work towards achieving it or if they can improve the process they do so.

02:13 If they haven't gone as far as they could, hopefully it say, you know, team that's well performing that they can create that vision of how to get to the end goal.

02:25 That means that there is good communication, there is good cohesion, there is mutual respect shown to each other.

02:33 There is somebody, maybe tasked with monitoring the situation.

02:36 So, how are we as a team working? Not only are we accomplishing the goal, but what are the team dynamics and is someone paying attention to that? Maybe each team member is responsible for speaking out if they see things that need attention.

02:54 There is self-monitoring.

02:55 So, each team member has defined role and responsibility in the team and they are self-monitoring of "Am I, you know, fulfilling my service to the team? And if not, you know, what can I do better?" There has to be some degree of flexibility.

03:14 So when things aren't working out or you experience any kind of pitfalls or hurdles that need to be overcome, you figure out a way to be flexible and work around those.

03:28 And lastly, it requires someone and it might be multiple team members, to be an effective leader, not necessarily the person that's designated as the leader of the team, each person might have shared leadership responsibilities and know when there might be conflicts and how to work towards resolving those conflicts.