Overcoming Barriers to Integrated Healthcare Teamwork

Barriers to Integrated Healthcare Teamwork

Developing integrated teamwork in healthcare faces challenges at multiple levels: individual, group, and institutional.

Understanding the Levels of Barriers

• Individual Barriers: These relate to each member's personal understanding of teamwork. A key question for healthcare professionals is defining their role and place within the team. Achieving common, shared, and aligned goals among professionals is a complex task.
• Group Process Barriers: Phenomena such as anxieties, fears, disputes, and conflicts often manifest as resistance, boycotts, or attacks within the work environment. These group dynamics can significantly impede the achievement of team goals.
• Institutional Barriers: A prominent institutional barrier is the use of knowledge as an instrument of power, which can hinder collaborative efforts.

Fostering Cooperation in Healthcare

To promote effective cooperation, a supportive organizational structure is essential. This structure should:

• Support the democratization of knowledge.
• Reduce rigidity in knowledge acquisition and transmission.
• Streamline care processes.
• Eliminate disputes regarding the priority or importance of different interventions.

New Focus on Public Health Policies and Training

There is a critical need for a renewed focus on public health policies and training programs for professionals entering this challenging field. A significant challenge involves reforming medical and other healthcare-related courses to:

• Incorporate integrated teamwork from the outset of training.
• Embrace a broad conception of health that includes individual subjectivity, interactions with others, social roles, and the relationship with the body.
• Move beyond a linear health-disease contrast, prioritizing socio-historical, cultural, and psychosomatic processes.
• Foster an understanding of each professional's unique role in healthcare, emphasizing the necessity of knowledge integration from the beginning of their education.

Investing in Professional Team Training

Furthermore, it is crucial to dedicate attention and investment to the ongoing training of professionals specifically for collaborative team environments.