Building Resilience in Health and Social Care Teams.

Structured Abstract: Purpose: This paper presents the results of a United Kingdom (UK) study that draws on the disciplines of Health and Social Care, Management and Organisational Psychology to explore the place of resilience in teams and its potential contribution to demand led Health and Social Care provision in Integrated care. Approach: A general inductive approach (Silverman, 2011) was applied. Five focus groups were facilitated (n=40) each with eight participants all of whom were leaders and managers of teams in Health and Social Care, working in the integrated care context in the United Kingdom. Findings: Findings indicate that taking into account the sustaining of effort in performance, whether the team is interprofessional or multidisciplinary in type and the model of team learning adopted could assist organisational workforce developers to target their education and training strategies so that teams may have more resilience to cope with changes faced. Research Limitations: This research is at an early stage and further examination and testing of the findings and potential solutions is required Practical Implications: Targeting team development and workforce education based on effort in performance, whether the team is interprofessional or multidisciplinary in type and the model of team learning could prove cost effective and impact on the resilience and performance of the integrated team in tough times. Originality/Value: This preliminary research, which capitalises on a distinction in team type and working practices between those of interprofessional and multidisciplinary teams ( Chmiel, McCray and Palmer, 2013) the sustaining of effort and the model of team learning, may have important consequences for team processes involved in resilience in Health and Social Care teams. These findings may be significant for workforce educators seeking to develop and build effective practice tools to sustain team working. Keywords: Teamwork. Resilience. Integrated Care. Interprofessional. Multidisciplinary. Article Classification: Research Paper