Healthcare and teamwork essay
Working in health care requires being a part of a team.
This essay will discuss A) Teamwork in health care, B) Define teams and teamwork, C) Teamwork and communication and reflecting back on the first part of the assessment D) Team leadership in teams and reflecting back on the first part of the assessment and E) My future goals
Health care is delivered in complex and dynamic circumstances. Patients are often transferred from different wards and health care settings and often require daily treatment from a number of health professionals so that they can receive the appropriate care for their illness/illnesses. This means health care staff are required daily to work together …show more content…
In a medical team the common goal would be the treatment and safety of the patient (Crisp, Taylor & Robeiro 2015, p. 127-128). Salas, Sims and Burke (2005) have researched five key aspects required for effective teamwork, these are identified as team orientation, team leadership, adaptability, mutual performance modelling and back up behaviour. For team success, in addition to these five components all members of the team must have shared mental models, mutual trust and communication (Salas, Sims & Burke …show more content…
The role of the team leader involves team development, coordinating and planning tasks among the team, guiding the team in the right direction, keeping the team on schedule, motivating the team and establishing a positive atmosphere (Salas, Sims & Burke 2005; Weller, Boyd & Cumin 2014). Our team leader demonstrated good leader skills by arranging meetings, communicating and asking our team questions and confirming that we were all happy with the way the team was working and progressing. The team leader effectively led us as a group without being too shy to do so or being over powering. I feel our team developed a positive atmosphere and this helped our team to work better together.
Assessment one was our first opportunity at University to work as a team with our peers. I hope in the future we have more assessments that require teamwork as I do find them challenging and I want to improve on my shyness and be braver at communicating with others, as I am aware that good and clear communication is required from a nurse. I think clinical placement will also be a good place for me to practice my communication skills.
The goal of this essay was to identified the important role of teamwork in health care, define aspects of teams and teamwork, discuss communication and leadership in teamwork in more detail, reflect on my own experience as a team member and to think about aspects that I want to improve in the future so that I can work as