CONCEPTUAL TOOLS FOR THINKING ABOUT INTERTEAM WORK IN CLINICAL GERONTOLOGY

Abstract

Frail elders with complex biopsychosocial and functional problems require the collaboration of many caregivers who are often working on different teams and may come from different organizations. The development and maintenance of collaborative alliances among caregivers working on different teams is the challenge of interteam work. It is a challenge because the quality of collaborative alliances in complex environments may predict outcomes better than the internal processes of individual teams and because researchers and educators in gerontology have yet to address this important issue. In this article, business and small group research on collaborative alliances is examined and a familiar truth emerges. Just as putting individuals together to work does not necessarily make for effective teamwork, so putting teams together to work does not necessarily produce effective interteam work. Several conceptual tools for thinking about interteam work are explored. These include a framework for understanding the effect of the diverse cultures of collaborating teams, a set of boundary‐crossing functions to enhance interteam linkage, an application from general systems theory that recognizes interteam collaboration as a systems issue, and a set of outcome expectations emerging from interteam experiences that feed forward and determine the quality of future collaboration. Throughout, the discussion of these tools draws on illustrations from practice in clinical gerontology.