Resource Center

This paper was originally published in the Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Interdisciplinary Health Team Care Conference, which took place September 23 - 25, 1982 in Lexington, KY.  It is reproduced here with the permission of the author.

As a member of an Interdisciplinary geriatric health care team for six years, the author had an opportunity to observe internal team functions during various team stages (formation - termination) of a team which went through nine distinct phases. Some team members remained constant for almost all nine phases while others changed.

The purpose of this paper is to define power and the related term of control in the context of its application with interdisciplinary teams. This paper will attempt to Identify and analyze situations where power has been used within a functioning interdisciplinary clinical team. An analysis of some of those situations and interviews with team members reveal several variables surrounding outcomes of intentional and unintentional application of power strategies.