Resource Center

This paper was originally published in the Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Interdisciplinary Health Team Care Conference, which took place September 28-30, 1983 in Rochester, New York.  It is reproduced here with the permission of the author.

The author writes: "The very likely superficial impression I have acquired from that portion of the health care teamwork literature I've sampled is that teams are often described with unexamined enthusiasm as an organizational innovation which, of itself, will somehow solve most of the major problems of health care delivery. Proponents of teamwork frequently advocate this form of care as an unmixed blessing, indeed almost as the best thing to happen to the health care field since the invention of the stethoscope.
But two disquieting questions soon arise: 1) what is the reality behind the rhetoric? and 2) why the rhetoric in the first place? The answer to the first question I leave to those of you who work within or who seriously and dispassionately evaluate the functioning of health care teams. The answer to the second question — or, really, the first sketch of an answer — is my purpose here. In other words, in my remarks I will explore some of the not always apparent political ends teamwork rhetoric has been used to serve."