Is Teamwork Really that Beneficial in Health Care?

摘要

Team-related attitudes can be fundamental to the successful operation of health care facilities, but they can also create confusion about authority and cause additional stress. Teamwork efforts are often utilized for patient safety improvement and increasing communication efforts among health care providers (HCPs). However, studies have revealed that many medical errors are attributed to interpersonal interaction issues and team-affiliated behaviors. These issues are caused from poor teamwork methodology implementation and can eventually lead to an overall decrease in patient safety. If hospitals choose to put effort into improving the teamwork among their HCPs, they should be careful to implement teamwork methodologies and practices to ensure that the HCPs work as a team and not merely as a group of individuals. This study aims to discuss the characteristics of an effective team and to examine the pros and cons of the different effects of utilizing teamwork in the health care setting.