The Effectiveness of Health Care Teams in the National Health Service

Communication difficulties between different professional groups have been
highlighted particularly. Bond, et. al., (1985) surveyed 161 pairs of General
Practitioners (GPs) and health visitors, and 148 pairs of GPs and district nurses who
had patients in common. They reported low levels of communication and
collaboration between GPs and community nursing staff and suggested that GPs had
a very poor understanding of the health visitor's role. Similarly, McClure (1984)
describes low levels of communication in a survey of 48 health visitors and 45 district
nurses attached to general practices. Community nurses reported that
communication with practice staff was usually only about specific immediate patient
issues rather than team objectives, strategies, processes and performance review.
Health visitors were noted to be similarly unenthusiastic about progress in teamwork.
Ross, Rink and Furne (2000) found that health visitors perceived teams as less
effective. They suggested that health visitors were comparatively more defensive
about the benefits of changing role boundaries and considered themselves less able
to contribute to the teams as currently constituted. Cant and Killoran (1993) reached
similar conclusions, based on their research study with 928 practice nurses, 682
health visitors and 679 district nurses. They argued that joint professional training
and the instigation of regular team meetings were necessary to promote good
communication.
Cott (1997) used a social network analysis of 93 health care workers across 3
multidisciplinary long-term care teams to explore communication processes within
teams. She concluded that higher status multi-professional members communicated
most openly and worked fairly autonomously across loosely structured tasks, with
low levels of authority. In contrast, hierarchical nursing sub-teams did not report high
levels of information sharing.
West and Slater (1996) reported that much of the potential benefit of teamwork was
not being realised, with less than one in four health care teams building effective
communication and teamworking practices (see also West & Poulton, 1997). In a
similar vein, the Audit Commission report in 1992 drew attention to a major gap
between the rhetoric and reality:
"Separate lines of control, different payment systems leading to suspicion
over motives, diverse objectives, professional barriers and perceived
inequalities in status, all play a part in limiting the potential of multi-
professional, multi-agency teamwork. . . for those working under such