Preparing to join a new team

A review by Dr Shivaa Ramsewak

Having taken a year off after F2 to do a masters in public health, the idea of joining an entirely new healthcare team, at an unfamiliar hospital, in a previously unknown area was incredibly daunting. During medical school and foundation training, there was a lot of emphasis on team working and leadership, and junior doctors are required to complete 360 degree assessments which require feedback from each part of the healthcare team (consultants, other junior doctors, nurses, ward clerks, pharmacists, and so on, depending on the rotation) in order to pass their F1 and F2 years. My hope for Oxford Medical Training’s online ‘Healthy Teams in Healthcare‘ course was that it would serve as another tool to help me reflect on my own behaviours that could hinder my ability to perform effectively and become accepted into the healthcare team, and to understand how to change these behaviours so that I would be able to assimilate into my new job more easily.

The course described two frameworks for understanding what makes a successful team: the Healthy Teams model, which outlines the key requirements of a team, and the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which illustrates elements which may cause problems within a team and thereby result in ineffective teamwork and poor results. I found that these frameworks were useful ways to think about working in a team, and although a lot of the material covered was information I had either been told previously or had thought about in abstract, I found it much more practical and memorable to aggregate the various concepts into more formal structures. The components of the Healthy Teams model and the Five Dysfunctions of a Team were each described in detail, as well as ways in which each requirement of a healthy team could be affected by the relevant dysfunction. While working through the course, I was able to put the concepts described into the context of my own experiences when teams had worked well (and not so well), and the questionnaire at the end helped me to reflect on how my individual performance might have contributed to these outcomes. I found the sections on common goals and effective feedback particularly relevant, as forming goals and giving and receiving feedback are areas that I have had difficulty with in the past.

Overall, I found this to be an enjoyable and practical course, which provided me with the knowledge needed to reflect on my own previous experience of working in teams, as well as ways I can improve to become a more valuable and effective team member. I would recommend it to anyone who’s interested in understanding more about the dynamics of team working. It took just under an hour to complete, and so would also be ideal for anyone with a spare hour who is looking to build up their non-clinical skills. I am looking forward to repeating the questionnaire once I have had a chance to put these concepts into action at my new job and seeing if and how my responses change.

Oxford Medical Training specialise in developing teaching, interview, communication, leadership and management skills for doctors.