Appreciative inquiry (AI) is a relatively new approach to initiating or managing organizational change that is associated with the ‘positiveness’ movement in psychology and its offshoot positive organizational scholarship. Rather than dwelling upon problems related to change, AI encourages individuals to adopt a positive, constructive approach to managing change. In recent years, AI has been… Read More »

As noted in the last blog entry (see May 2, 2011), the use of interprofessional simulation based on psychological conceptions of non-technical skills tends also to emphasise the individual as the site of the ‘problem’ and ‘solution’ to communication and collaboration.  As a result, there appears to be a disconnect between the theoretical and methodological approach… Read More »

Poor interprofessional communication and teamwork are now well recognised as significant contributors to adverse events in healthcare.  These ‘non-technical skills’ are particularly pertinent in high-hazard areas such as obstetric settings, operating rooms, emergency departments and intensive care units. Recognition of the magnitude of these teamwork issues has led to calls for improved interprofessional training in many… Read More »

Research is central to developing knowledge on the effects and effectiveness of interprofessional teamwork. Research though demands a critical stance – one that has as a starting point the possibility that different teamwork approaches are needed, depending on local needs; and accepts that teamwork interventions may have a range of outcomes (e.g. success, no effect,… Read More »

While there is a growing research literature on interprofessional teamwork, much of it consists of unproblematised accounts of health and social care teams.  For example, many studies rely on locally developed surveys or on data drawn from interviews with team members. These insights have provided a normative view of teamworking.  Furthermore, most evaluations rest upon… Read More »

In the past few years I’ve noticed a growing use of consultants employed by health and social care institutions to ‘intervene’ in order to provide ‘solutions’ to poor interprofessional team relations.  An increasingly popular approach used by consultants attempting to offer solutions to teamwork problems is appreciative inquiry which encourages individuals to adopt a positive… Read More »

Despite a growing amount of research on interprofessional interventions to promote collaboration and teamwork, systematic reviews in the interprofessional field have indicated that there was a continuing problem with the conceptualisation of different types of interprofessional educational and practice interventions.  Clarity has been traditionally inhibited by the lack of a robust evidence base for the… Read More »

The focus on industrial quality improvement (QI) and teamwork emerged in the 1940s in response to the need for high quality, low cost materials for World War II.  The quality improvement approach was subsequently popularised in the Japanese automobile manufacturing industry in the 1960s and 1970s.  Supported by influential organisations such as the Institute for… Read More »

One of the foremost efforts by the aviation community to develop safe teams is the training program known as CRM.  This approach originated from work undertaken by  NASA who identified that the primary cause of the majority of aviation accidents was human error, and that the main problems were failures of communication, leadership and decisions… Read More »

Established academic fields such as education and sociology have regularly problematised a range of common place issues.  However, to date, within the interprofessional field there has been little effort to problematise key interprofessional concepts, the interprofessional activities (courses, workshops) that have been produced, or the evaluative approaches employed.  The lack of problematisation within the interprofessional… Read More »