Nursing

Team concept helps drive two Pennsylvania facilities to success

Nurse Leader Weekly, October 16, 2006

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Are you a team player?

Most people would reply by saying "of course" when asked this question. However, when administrators at the Penn State College of Medicine (PSCM) and Milton S. Hershey (PA) Medical Center (MHMC) restructured their institution, they discovered that the concept of teamwork was foreign to some employees.

Between 2000 and 2005, PSCM and MHMC underwent a sweeping organizational change after a failed merger with a large health system, according to an article published in the August Academic Medicine. A key concept in the transformation that followed was the implementation of interdisciplinary teams within the academic health center.

Project launched

In setting up this novel team structure, project leaders first offered campus-wide informational workshops on team organization, and then identified the individuals best suited to be effective team members. Kevin Grigsby, DSW, vice dean for faculty and administrative affairs at PSCM, and Darrell Kirch, MD, senior vice president, dean, and CEO of the health center, then selected a team of employees from a wide cross-section of positions within the health center.

"When this project started, [the organization] was very hierarchical in its decision-making structure," says Grigsby. "To create teams, we talked to managers and asked for people who had different sets of skills and perspectives."

Known as the "unified campus teams," the teams are composed of 13-17 members, with each member agreeing to a one-year term with the possibility of reappointment. There were several different teams including academic, research, clinical, finance, human resources, physical resources, relationships and connectivity, information resources and technology, and strategic relations.

According to Grigsby, the unified campus teams are charged with the following five specific duties:

  • Unite the organization
  • Create a compelling strategic vision
  • Seize opportunities for collaboration
  • Solve systems problems
  • Create a greater sense of staff ownership and accountability

All teams meet simultaneously every Wednesday from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. They approach issues from an institutional point of view, rather than a parochial one, and act in the institution's best interest instead of their own, says Grigsby.

In the five years since implementation, team members have increasingly felt that they are meeting the goals listed above, say Grigsby and Kirch.

Editor's note: This excerpt was adapted from Residency Program Alert, October 2006, HCPro, Inc.



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