The Effectiveness of Health Care Teams in the National Health Service

senior health visitor and practice manager/senior receptionist in each practice. A
reply slip was included, which also solicited additional information about the team
(fund holding status, frequency and type of meetings, Jarman index, number of GPs,
list size etc.) 3
The initial letter was followed up with a telephone call to the practice manager/senior
receptionist at all 300 practices. If teams had already indicated a willingness to
participate, practical arrangements for questionnaire distribution were made.
Researchers requested the name of a contact person in the team to enable
continued effective liaison. The contact person was telephoned at a later date to
determine whether the team was willing to take part in the research. Teams that did
not return a reply slip were also telephoned and provided with additional information.
Further follow-up telephone calls were made until the team made a decision about
participation in the research (some PHCTs were contacted six or seven times before
a decision was made). When teams agreed to collaborate in the research,
questionnaires were sent to the contact person for distribution to team members.
After three months the response rate from 10 teams was below 30% and 23 had not
returned any questionnaires. These teams were dropped from the sample and
replaced with 7 teams based in an inner city area, and 7 from a rural location,
resulting in a final sample of 100 teams. The total response rate was 55.8%.
Response rates for teams ranged from 21.4% to 100%, with a mean of 57.6%.
Data Collection Methods
Data on team functioning and effectiveness were collected using three methods: self
report questionnaires completed by individual team members; self report and
telephone interview surveys with the team contacts; and external ratings from
primary health care representatives and health authority staff.
1156 respondents from 100 PHCTs completed questionnaires on their perceptions of
team functioning and team effectiveness. Of these, 85% were female; 15% were
GPs; 14.2 % practice nurses; 23% trust nurses (health visitors, district nurses,
3 Copies of interview schedules, questionnaires and all data collection instruments are
available from the first author of this report.