Enabling team learning in healthcare

ABSTRACT

This paper is based on a study of learning processes within 35 healthcare therapy teams that took action to improve their services. The published research on team learning is introduced, and the paper suggests it is an activity that has similarities with action research and with those forms of action learning where teams address collective problems to enhance organisational performance. The paper proposes factors within the teams and in the teams’ environments that enabled team learning, in particular, within the team, the behaviours of team leaders to encourage learning, communication, planning, action and review, and in the teams’ environments, the behaviour of senior managers and other stakeholders in positions of authority, access to effective information systems, and the availability of a modest amount of resource to enable team learning.

KEYWORDS:

• team learning
• action research
• healthcare
• service improvement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

George Boak has worked on aspects of individual and organisational development for over 25 years, with managers and professionals from the health service and other public sector organisations, and from a wide range of private sector companies. He is particularly interested in how change can be brought about in complex organisations. He is a senior lecturer in leadership and innovation at York St John University, where he is a core member of the executive MA programme in Leading Innovation and Change.