This document discusses teams and multidisciplinary teams in a healthcare setting. It defines a team as a small group of people with complementary skills committed to a common goal and mutual accountability. A multidisciplinary team in healthcare includes professionals from different disciplines like nursing, social work, physiotherapy, dietetics, and pharmacy. They work together to plan and provide care for patients. Effective teamwork can be challenging as healthcare professionals receive independent education with little shared learning.

2. TEAM WORK AND THE
MULTIDISCIPLINARY TEAM

3. LEARNING OUTCOMES
This chapter aims to assist you to understand how a team
functions and works together. You will learn how to work
more effectively with colleagues, by improving your
communication skills and supporting others during
difficult times.

4. WHAT IS A TEAM?
According to Katzenbach and Smith (1993) a team can be
defined as:
A small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a
common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they are mutually
accountable.
A good team needs to be both efficient and effective.
Efficient
Productive working with minimum wasted effort;
“doing things right”.
Effective
Producing the desired result; “doing the right thing”.
Let us look at what makes a team effective or ineffective,
and what skills are required to support good team working.

5. THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY TEAM
A multidisciplinary team is a type of team that is
especially common in the National Health Service
(NHS), where individuals with a range of expertise and
skills work together to plan, deliver and monitor health
and social care with a particular patient or a group of
patients.
In a hospital setting team members may include:
• social workers,
• physiotherapists,
• occupational therapists,
• dieticians,
• pharmacists.

6. Or, if you work in the community, they could also include:
• GPs,
• district nurses,
• chiropodist.
Dougherty and Lister (2011) state:
Other health care specialists may also be
represented on this team and can be involved in
a patient’s care

7. TEAM WORK AND THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY TEAM
Expanding to include a range of health-care professionals
such as a respiratory specialist nurses. However, one of the
major obstacles to multidisciplinary team work is the lack of
shared learning between health-care professionals; they are
all educated independently.
As a student nurse you will join many different teams as
you change clinical placements, and it may be difficult
for you to become an effective member of a team during
a short placement. One of the major challenges in a large
organisation such as the NHS is the issue of working
across boundaries, such as the need to encourage
collaboration between primary and secondary care.