Innovations in Teamwork for Health Care | Harvard University

Health care is a team effort. From the front desk administrators to the nurses, doctors, insurers, and even the patients and their families, there are many people involved in an individual’s care. To deliver quality care in today’s fast-paced environment, practitioners and caregivers must go beyond medical problem-solving and rely on effective collaboration and communication skills.

While other businesses may organize around a functional area or project, allowing team members to learn each other's working styles and strengths over time, health care workers often find themselves in ad hoc scenarios, coordinating with near-strangers on life and death situations. As a leader, how do you encourage trust and meet shared goals when teams are formed quickly? How do you strengthen flexibility and collaboration even as team membership and structures fluctuate across departments?

In Innovations in Teamwork for Health Care, leaders in the field of organizational behavior and teamwork, Amy Edmondson, Professor at Harvard Business School, and Michaela Kerrissey, Assistant Professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, share their latest research and present their concept of "teaming" as it relates to the health care and life science industries.

In this course, you will explore the complexities of collaboration in dynamic cross-functional teams and its impact on quality of care. You will examine the theory of teaming – where individuals join together to lend their expertise – to appreciate what enables effective teamwork and why teamwork fails; articulate the importance of psychological safety and a joint problem-solving orientation; understand the particular needs of time-limited teams; and rethink the role of hierarchy and leadership in the context of teaming.

You’ll hear firsthand from experts with experience inside and outside the health care industry, from CEO and President of the Cleveland Clinic, Tomislav Mihaljevic, to Andres Sougarret, the engineer who led the miraculous rescue of 33 Chilean miners in 2011.

Ultimately, this course provides you with the tools needed to implement effective teaming strategies for patient-centered care and provides your organization with a framework to empower robust communication, improve efficiency, and elevate patient safety.

Don’t leave teaming up to chance. Create better teamwork through science.