Working Effectively as Part of a Team

Abstract

Teamworking is an inevitable part of working within a complex multidisciplinary environment. Thankfully, most interactions with other members of the healthcare team will be positive and constructive. Unfortunately, such happy circumstances do not make for particularly interesting SJT scenarios. The following section is therefore full of colleagues that are angry, rude, dishonest, unprofessional, and even intoxicated. In Raising and Acting on Concerns About Patient Safety (2012), the General Medical Council (GMC) states that ‘all doctors have a duty to raise concerns where they believe that patient safety or care is being compromised by the practice of colleagues or the systems, policies and procedures in the organizations in which they work’. The GMC proposes taking the following steps in sequence when you develop serious concerns about a colleague: ● Raise the concern with ‘your manager or an appropriate officer of the organisation . . . such as the consultant in charge of the team, the clinical or medical director’. Alternatively, a foundation doctor may raise their concern with an appropriate person responsible for training such as their Foundation Programme Director. ● Raise the concern with a regulator (such as the GMC), professional body (such as the British Medical Association), or charity (such as Public Concern at Work). This step should be taken if you have exhausted options for raising the concern internally and there is an ‘immediate serious risk to patients, and a regulator or other external body has responsibility to act or intervene’. ● Raise the concern publicly. This step should be taken when you have exhausted options for raising the concern internally and have ‘good reason to believe that patients are still at risk of harm’. Your usual duty is to avoid breaching patient confidentiality. This is a highly unusual and significant step to take and is unlikely to be appropriate without first having taken advice from an appropriate organization such as the GMC, BMA, or Public Concern at Work. The questions within this section highlight your ability and willingness to work with team members. You will need to work collaboratively and respectfully within a multi- disciplinary team, as well as provide advice and support to colleagues.