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This paper was originally published in the Proceedings of the First Annual Interdisciplinary Teams in Primary Care Conference, which took place May 3-5, 1979 in Seattle, Washington.  It is reproduced here with the permission of the authors.

Health teams seem to mean different things to different people, as reflected in their diverse motivations for participating. Indeed, joining or participating on a primary care team may represent new or special ways of 1) learning and interacting with others; 2) working and performing tasks with others; and 3) delivering care or creating institutional or systems change. It is of interest that these three motivations fit in with the schema of group, team, and organization implied by the title of the paper. The problem is that effective teamwork in health care involves all three levels, and, unless prospective team members are prepared to deal with all three, difficulties are sure to arise. Indeed, the uniqueness of teams may lie in the acknowledged need to attend equally to all three areas if personal satisfaction, development and survival are to be achieved.