TY - JOUR
T1 - Understanding adaptive teamwork in health care
T2 - Progress and future directions
AU - Anderson, Janet E.
AU - Lavelle, Mary
AU - Reedy, Gabriel
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Health care teamwork is a vital part of clinical work and patient care but is poorly understood. Despite poor teamwork being cited as a major contributory factor to adverse events, we lack vital knowledge about how teamwork can be improved. Teams in health care are diverse in structure and purpose, and most patient care depends on the ability of different professionals to coordinate their actions. Research in this area has narrowly defined health care teams, focused mainly on a small range of settings and activities and addressed a limited range of research questions. We argue that a new approach to teamwork research is needed and make three recommendations. First, the temporal and dynamic features of teamwork should be studied to understand how teamwork unfolds sequentially. Second, contextual influences should be integrated into study designs, including the organization of work, tasks, patients, organisational structures, and health care system factors. Finally, exploratory, rather than confirmatory, research designs are needed to analyse the complex patterns of social interaction inherent in health care work, to build our theoretical understanding of health care teams and their work, and ultimately to develop effective interventions to support better teamwork for the benefit of patients.
AB - Health care teamwork is a vital part of clinical work and patient care but is poorly understood. Despite poor teamwork being cited as a major contributory factor to adverse events, we lack vital knowledge about how teamwork can be improved. Teams in health care are diverse in structure and purpose, and most patient care depends on the ability of different professionals to coordinate their actions. Research in this area has narrowly defined health care teams, focused mainly on a small range of settings and activities and addressed a limited range of research questions. We argue that a new approach to teamwork research is needed and make three recommendations. First, the temporal and dynamic features of teamwork should be studied to understand how teamwork unfolds sequentially. Second, contextual influences should be integrated into study designs, including the organization of work, tasks, patients, organisational structures, and health care system factors. Finally, exploratory, rather than confirmatory, research designs are needed to analyse the complex patterns of social interaction inherent in health care work, to build our theoretical understanding of health care teams and their work, and ultimately to develop effective interventions to support better teamwork for the benefit of patients.
KW - adaptive teams
KW - interprofessional teamwork
KW - research design
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85097790295&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1355819620978436
DO - 10.1177/1355819620978436
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85097790295
SN - 1355-8196
JO - Journal of Health Services Research and Policy
JF - Journal of Health Services Research and Policy
ER -