Team-building 101
By Cindy Borgmeyer
• Rochester, N.Y.
3/1/2005
When it comes to building a patient care team, these pearls from Woodward Health Center's Michele Hannagan, F.N.P., director of clinical operations, will go far:
This story first appeared in the March 2005 FP Report.
- Delegate, delegate, delegate. Just be sure everyone on the care team understands and is comfortable with the parameters established. Her advice for family physicians concerned about delegating: "Lay that right out -- what you want the nurses to not handle, what you want to make sure gets put on your desk."
- Pair like with like. When forming the team, consider each member's work style and care philosophy. For example, two of the Woodward center's FPs see a lot of Somali refugee patients, adding translation issues to often complex medical and psychosocial needs. Result? "Those appointments are never just 15 minutes," says Hannagan. "They're always longer than that. If that's going to get you uptight as a nurse because you want to keep moving things along, we're not going to pair you with that patient group."
- For better or for worse ... . If you commit to practicing as a team, then commit to resolving conflicts as a team. At Woodward, Hannagan says, when nurses come to her with concerns, she encourages them to go back to their teams. "The idea is to let them function without being micromanaged by me or by the medical director," she says, "to let them figure out what system works for them."
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