Enabling team learning in healthcare

Abstract

This paper is based on a study of learning processes within 35 healthcare therapy teams that took action to improve their services. The published research on team learning is introduced, and the paper suggests it is an activity that has similarities with action research and with those forms of action learning where teams address collective problems to enhance organisational performance. The paper proposes factors within the teams and in the teams' environments that enabled team learning, in particular, within the team, the behaviours of team leaders to encourage learning, communication, planning, action and review, and in the teams' environments the behaviour of senior managers and other stakeholders in positions of authority, access to effective information systems, and the availability of a modest amount of resource to enable team learning.

Improving teamworking competence through action learning. Experiences in operations management education

“…Holmes (2010) described how AL when undertaken in a project, encourages shared learning about team dynamics. Boak (2016) explored the enablers of team learning in situations where the participants worked collectively to solve organisational problems. He identified interacting factors enabling collective learning including processes of communication and decision-making, and access to information systems providing accurate, current data on performance.…”

“…Such evolution may be enabled by identifying and discussing a shared practical problem, the way of working together, developing a plan to solve this problem and to review progress and performance (Kolb, 1984). The cycle of planning and review is important while reflection helps team members to become more aware of their collective actions and what they can do to become more efficient (O'Neil et al, 2008;Plauborg, 2009;Boak, 2016).…”

Multi-level learning in public healthcare medical teams: the role of the social environment

“…While there has been extensive research in the learning sphere, the links between individual and team learning in an organizational setting have yet to be fully explored (Annosi et al, 2020;Doyle et al, 2015;Parboteeah et al, 2015;Tanyaovalaksna and Li, 2013), paving the way JHOM 35,1 88 for the current research study. In studies of clinical teams, there have been calls for research on team-learning processes (Parboteeah et al, 2015;Smith et al, 2018;Tanyaovalaksna and Li, 2013), how individuals interact (Boak, 2016;Van den Bossche et al, 2006) in teams (Doyle et al, 2015) and how experience impacts on the use of intuition in clinical decision-making (Pretz and Folse, 2011). Despite this interest, research on the understanding of team effects on learning at the micro or individual level is sparse (Doyle et al, 2015;Parboteeah et al, 2015).…”

“…When contemplating individual-dyad-team learning interplay, the exchange of information between team members is a key activity (Boak, 2016) allowing individual exploration and construction of meaning. When on the job, one's belief in one's ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish a task grows with experience (Ellington and Dierdorff, 2014), a process often referred to as building self-efficacy.…”

“…Professional affiliations amongst doctors and other healthcare professionals are pronounced and develop through a long process of socialisation, which shapes the professional sense of identity (West and Markiewicz, 2016). Thus, the way in which a team learns influences the performance of that team, so nurturing team learning in the healthcare context could enhance the professionalism of healthcare teams (Boak, 2016).…”