Dear Sir
The GMC's Good Medical Practice (www.gmc-uk.org) emphasizes the importance of Working in Teams, advising doctors to
respect the skills and contributions of your colleagues
communicate effectively with colleagues within and outside the team
make sure that your patients and colleagues understand your role and responsibilities in the team, and who is responsible for each aspect of patient care
participate in regular reviews and audit of the standards and performance of the team, taking steps to remedy any deficiencies
support colleagues who have problems with performance, conduct or health.
As a medical undergraduate little emphasis is placed on acquiring such skills, making it difficult to be fully competent when facing the transition to a real life doctor. NASA's Moon Landing exercise is an approach to enhance team building, which could easily be transferred to the medical field (Insight).
The exercise centres on being a member of a space crew scheduled to rendezvous with a mother ship. However due to mechanical difficulties, you are forced to land 200 miles away from the rendezvous point. Candidates are allocated to teams of 4 and are provided with 15 items which they can use to reach the mother ship. Each item is scored accordingly as to its value by NASA.
The list of items, with most valued items being scored lower, is as follows: box of matches; food concentrate; 50 feet of nylon rope; parachute silk; two 0.45 caliber pistols; one case of dehydrated milk; two 100-pound tanks of oxygen; stellar map; self-inflating life raft; magnetic compass; five gallons of water; signal flares; first aid kit containing injection needles; solar powered FM receiver; portable heating unit.
NASA advocates that the overall score can be used to assess whether individuals are working effectively in teams with the lower scoring teams surviving and the higher scoring teams remaining lifeless on the surface of the moon.
Team working is of course a lifelong skill in medicine gained from experience in the field, but exposure to its essence from early on can surely spark momentum in enhancing professionalism and more importantly patient safety.