Healthcare teamwork best practices: lessons for industry

Abstract

Purpose

Since the field of healthcare was a latecomer to the quality movement, knowledge transfer has generally flowed in one direction, from industry to healthcare. However, organisations can also be enriched by healthcare. In particular, this paper aims to show industry that important lessons can be learned regarding how teamwork is generally managed within healthcare.

Design/methodology/approach

To identify the useful lessons that healthcare can teach industry, the authors started with a brainstorming session among the members of the research team to pin‐point the lessons based on their experience with healthcare and industrial environments. Afterwards, an exhaustive review of the relevant literature from the last ten years was carried out.

Findings

Industrial organisations need to develop teamwork frameworks focused on involving every employee in cross‐disciplinary, empowered and trained teams. Moreover, from a team perspective, special care must be shown when defining clear roles, focusing on end clients, formulating shared objectives and facilitating internal communications.

Practical implications

The ten lessons from healthcare teamwork best practices believed to be the most important are given in the paper. Although some of these lessons may not be completely new concepts for industrial organisations, the paper shows how healthcare develops, spreads and applies these concepts in the real world.

Originality/value

The paper summarises, in ten useful lessons for organisations, healthcare's best teamwork practices in the literature.

Citation

Tanco, M., Jaca, C., Viles, E., Mateo, R. and Santos, J. (2011), "Healthcare teamwork best practices: lessons for industry", The TQM Journal, Vol. 23 No. 6, pp. 598-610. https://doi.org/10.1108/17542731111175220