Virtual teamwork in healthcare delivery: I-O psychology in telehealth research and practice

Abstract

[...]research on virtual healthcare teams will take place primarily in field-based versus laboratory-based settings, which may improve the ecological validity of research findings when applied in practice. [...]the rapid transition to telehealth due to the COVID-19 pandemic presents a significant opportunity for longitudinal research to study healthcare teams with a prior (and, perhaps long-term) history of face-to-face (FTF) interactions that now take place with some extent of virtuality. [...]in the inpatient setting, teams engaging in virtual rounding or teams working within inpatient COVID-19 care units will exhibit variations in functional diversity (e.g., clinical expertise), technology used (e.g., videoconferencing, telephone), and geographic dispersion (e.g., locally within the hospital with some in/out of the patient room) throughout the duration of a patient’s hospitalization. [...]there is an opportunity to move beyond subjective satisfaction and experience indicators of virtual team performance to more objective outcomes.