How Effective is Team Work at Your Practice?

Michelle MacGillivray November 08

Ballarat Medical Practice recently took their team out into the community to participate in the Relay for Life.

This was a fantastic networking and team building opportunity for the practice. For a month prior to the event the practice team dressed in their "Relay for Life" gear and solicited donations for this worthwhile fund-raising activity.

Lisa Wisely, the Practice Nurse Manager, said it that although the weather was against them (rain, wind and hail), it was an opportunity for the team to socialise outside work, involve their families and do some community fund -raising. Most importantly, the practice had FUN, so much so that they are preparing for next event - Trek for Timor in 2009!

Well done Ballarat and Buninyong Medical Centres!

Teamwork in general practice

Based on experience of the Australian Primary Care Collaboratives(APCC), successful practice teams have demonstrated 4 key characteristics:

1. The team is clear on what is required of them and they have an agreed strategy on how to complete all tasks required to run the practice.
2. They have enough information, skills and experience to do the job.
3. They have constructive group dynamics that create and maintain effective and efficient levels of communication.
4. Members of the practice team are committed to the practice and to producing high quality, responsive patient care. ⁽¹⁾

If your practice thinks it has an effective team, perhaps you could undertake a self reflection questionnaire, like this one on the APCC website.

Carn Brae Clinic have committed to the Australian Primary Care Collaborative Program along with a number of other Victorian and Tasmanian practices. The goal of the collaborative program is to assist practices to develop their capability to deliver rapid, sustainable and systematic improvements in the care they provide to patients and their communities through quality improvement cycles. ⁽¹⁾

Two staff members from Carn Brae attended the first Learning Workshop in Melbourne recently. The focus of the first workshops were:

An introduction to

• Chronic Disease and
• Access and Care Redesign

using the quality improvement principles.

The first steps that the practice will undertake is to build the practice team.

When a practice builds a team they need to consider:

• Setting realistic goals
• Communicating with other team members
• Engaging the team
• Assigning roles and responsibilities
• Reflecting and reviewing what the team is doing ⁽¹⁾

These themes will be explored in future eNewsletter articles.

References

^1. Improvement Foundation Australia 2008, Collaborative Handbook, Phase 2 Version 1 May 2008, Commonwealth of Australia.

This article is available online at http://bddgp.org.au/article/2008/11/team-development

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