Change catalyzed teamwork
It is so often invoked that health care is a team sport. In practicality, while we may aspire to work as a team, health care delivery is still all too often comprised of a set of individual actors with individualized responsibilities trying to communicate the best they can with each other.
What I experienced during the surge at my hospital was the very best version of teamwork I have ever been a part of in health care: empathetic, mutually interdependent strangers coming together during daily changes in staffing, processes, and resources. I will never forget nights walking into the pediatric floor or day surgery recovery area—now repurposed as a COVID unit—to entirely new faces comprised of GI suite nurses, outpatient doctors, and moonlighting intensivists.
We were all new to each other, all new to working in this setting, and all new to whatever the newest changes of the day brought. I will never forget how we greeted each other and introduced ourselves. We asked each other where we were “from,” and held a genuine appreciation to each other for being there. Imagine how this impacted how we worked together. Looking back on those night shifts, I remember us as a truly interdependent team. I will endeavor to bring that sense of mutual regard and interdependency into my work to foster effective interdisciplinary and cross-continuum teamwork.
Takeaways
As a student and practitioner of delivery system transformation, I am often in conversations about imperfect data, incomplete evidence, and role-specific and organizational resistance to change. As an acute care provider during the COVID-19 hospital surge in my region, the experiences I had as a participant in the COVID-related delivery system change will stay with me as I lead value-based delivery system change. What worked in an infectious disease crisis holds great relevance to our pressing, urgent, relevant work to create a more person-centered, equitable, and value-based delivery system.
I am confident that if those of us seeking to improve outcomes use visible and accessible data to engender confidence, clearly link practice change to the relevant and urgent issue at hand, promote broadly visible creative problem solving to foster an ecosystem of change, and cultivate empathy and mutual interdependence to promote the teamwork we aspire to have, that we will foster meaningful progress in our efforts to improve care for patients and populations.
Corresponding author: Amy Boutwell, MD, MPP, President, Collaborative Healthcare Strategies, Lexington, MA; amy@collaborativehealthcarestrategies.com.
Financial disclosures: None.