The Direct Link between Team Building and Health Care Quality

If you have ever experienced at minimum one work day you have probably heard over and over again the concept of you and your co-workers being a "team". This may be an admirable (or not so admirable) attempt by your Human Resources (HR) department to build some kind of comradery within the ranks. Unfortunatley, no matter how admirable their attempt, the concept of being a "team" is no more then a slogan on the wall or some printed words on recruitment materials to make their organization look progressive or employee friendly. The unfortunate reality is that HR simply does not want to deal with your bickering and would rather you and your fellow "team" members deal with as many issues as you can amongst yourselves so that they can go back to their real functions, ie: keeping a close eye on all of you!

As you already may know, the "team" concept is not new. This concept is used in all sorts of professional settings with varying degrees of success and failure. However, the concept of a "team" is one that is crucial to the consistent improvement and maintainence of quality within the health care industry. Make no mistake, health care staff and professionals must operate as a team at all times, not doing so allows for costly errors that lead to many negative occurrences which ultimately lead to the detriment to the quality of life for people and communities and on occasion sometimes even lead to the loss of life. It is no wonder that team building is such an important concept within the health care industry and one that all health care administrators, professional staff, nurses, physicians, and allied health staff are extremely serious about. Being a "team" is much more than a simple slogan on a wall or some creative print in a recruitment pamphlet, it is must be considered crucial to the delivery of health care services.

Time and time again, research has proven that "team building can increase efficiency and productivity" (Antai-Otong, 1997). So what exactly is a team? The concept of "team" is often mistaken with the concept of a "work group". Though they share many similarities one stark and very significant difference between the two is that a team shares the blame for their mistakes while the work group is prone to blaming an individual or individuals. This means that the team must work together, often helping each other out, to accomplish a single goal. For this to occur, we must move away from building work groups to building teams, but how can we accomplish this?

One crucial step in team building must be the realization by the administration, staff, and support staff that it can take quite some time to build a team. This period of time can be months or years. However, no matter how long it takes, a commitment must be made by all members of the "team" to see the process through. Abandoning or quitting during the process will lead to even greater obstacles then before the process even began! For a successful team to evolve we must have four essential qualities:

1. Open and effective communication
2. Member involvement and member ownership
3. Clearly defined goals
4. Trust

It must be noted that trust cannot be created, in fact, trust is essentially a byproduct of the first three qualities successfully being implemented. In many ways, the first three qualities are only a part of the process that eventually leads to the ultimate goal of team building: trust. Once trust has been accomplished, team efficiency, productivity, and quality seem to have unlimited boundaries. In many ways team building is an exercise in achieving trust, which ultimately allows teams to operate their most efficient levels while maintaining high levels of quality work.

Considering how much of a significant affect team building can have on quality and productivity, it's hard to imagine why every single organization does not find a way to incorporate team building into the development of their staff. Unfortunately, many organizations simply do not have the resources or the need to build teams and simply resort to "pretending" to believe in team building. Other obstacles such as workload and/or staff turnover are simply too great to establish any sort of a team environment within an organization.

Though the challanges are great, many organizations have overcome them through perserverance, leadership, and consistency. One of the best examples of organizations overcoming such adversities exists within professinal sports. In an era where team rosters can literally change from year to year, many professional sports teams have been able to maintain a level of excellence unparalled by other clubs. This is not accomplished by attracting the greatest talent, best educated, or even the best skilled individuals. It is accomplished by two simple goals:

1. Consistent leadership within key positions
2. Attracting individuals who "buy into" the system

A team building program cannot exist without certain key leaders throughout the entire process. This consitent leadership is not necesserily composed of those who lead the process of team building, but instead are "keepers of the flame" whom have gained the respect and loyalty of the organization. These individuals must be retained to safeguard the "culture" of the agency, which in turn determines how the team building process will take place. This "culture" must be nurtured and maintained at all costs.

As you can see, team building is not an easy 1-2-3 process, instead it is an ongoing process that is being constantly repeated and improved throughout the team building process and the lifetime of the organization. Graphically, team building can be categorized by the following:

Consistent Leadership --> Recruiting people to "buy into" the system ---> Commitment by all team members to "see the process through"--> Incorporating the 4 essential qualities of Team Buildng--> TEAM

Though team building is a difficult and laborious task, it has been proven to improve both quality and efficiency. The concept of team building will be a crucial step in the evolution and improvement of health care delivery services in the United States now and in the future.


Works Cited:

Antai-Otong, Deborah (1997). Team Building in a Health Care Setting. The American Journal of Nursing. 1997, 7, pp. 48-51.
Retrieved June 6, 2010 from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3465461