Gfok045 Advanced Communication - Free Assessment Answers

How did you feel about group work at the beginning
Did your feelings change
Were you positive about it or negative?
Were you hesitant about the presentation or excited?

The healthcare professionals conduct reflective practice to learn from their experiences in different activities in healthcare. This helps them to develop their skills and knowledge of caring for patients (Sims, Hewitt & Harris, 2015). With the increase of life expectancy, individuals are seen to suffer from co-morbid disorders. Therefore, healthcare members need to work as a team in order to provide care that aligns with the requirements of the patient’s health condition (Weller, Boyd & Cumin, 2014). The better the members are able to work together in collaboration, the better they will be able to provide safe and quality care to patient. I would thereby use Gibb’s reflection cycle to reflect on a group wok experience that I had while completing my assignments and how it turned out in the end.

Our respected mentor gave the assignment of a group presentation and discussed with us the details of the marking criteria and the weight-age of the assignment. According to the advice of the mentor, a five-member team was formed in week two and the presentation was represented in week five. It was a 30-minute presentation. We were given the freedom to choose our own topic. However, many issues started after the formation of the groups. The members of the groups were only acquaintances and none shared friendly and close bonds with each other. Therefore, all the members were disappointed at first. No one was ready to take any initiative and days were passing without any preparation. However many of them did not turn up for meetings and even did not inform others. The meeting failed miserably as the present members were not finalizing on any particular topic. None were accepting others suggestions. However, I took the initiative and mailed individual to all other. Throughout the next week, no one communicated with each other and did not work collaboratively. They just worked individually on their own part. On final day of the merging of the work, the information was colliding with other and there was a complete absence of easy flow of the information. However, it was too late and we had to conduct the presentation. It was not a very pleasurable experience.

Initially before the beginning of the preparation phase, I was quite excited about working in a team. However, the different issues that started pouring in during the preparation phase first used to make me agitated and disappointed. I was shocked to see how no one was caring for others feedbacks and were very non-compliant with each other. I used to get tired trying to influence them to work as a team. As the days were approaching, I started feeling very nervous and tensed as I realized that there was complete absence of communication. I often used to be tensed about thinking of the outcome on the presentation day. None approached each other due to interpersonal conflicts and inferiority- superiority complex. On the final day, we realized several errors that occurred in the presentation mainly due to lack of collaboration and coordination. I was upset with the outcome as understood that I would be not getting good marks in the assignment due to failure of the teamwork.

The bad part of the entire incident was that lack of effective teamwork was clearly reflected in the presentation and this exposed us to the chances of scoring less marks. The main reason for the failure for the group work was due to lack of coordination and collaboration while preparing the slides of the assignment. The team members did not communicate with each other due to presence of complexes and absence of communication was the main reason that made the team members confused about their presentation part sequence on the final day. None of the members accepted each other’s suggestions and no one compromised on any aspects. We mainly communicated through mails and therefore, different queries that arose among each of the team members could not be resolved in the right time. Written communication is not the best form of communication for effective multidisciplinary teamwork in healthcare when considered the primary medium of communication (Gordon et al., 2015). As huge amount of time was lost in the third week in deciding on the ideas and zeroing on one particular topic, the time received by each member for ppt making became less. Therefore, the slides were not only unimpressive but also did not align with each other and did not maintain a floe. The background of the slides I prepared was different from others. Therefore, we could not mange time efficiently. Effective time management helps in increasing the time for practicing with the script and it helps to develop the quality of presentation (Casimiro et al., 2015). Rehearsing is an important part of presentation as it helps in breaking the uncomfortable feeling and helps in developing confidence to face audience. As we did not rehearse, the presentation did not turn out successfully.

I realized some of the negative aspects that were associated with my team-working skills. I easily got agitated with the other members when they were not taking initiatives and shouted on them. This showed lack of self-regulation. This affects the quality of relationship by making others develop negative feelings towards the individual (Gittell et al., 2015). I should have adopted efficient verbal and non-verbal communication skills. These are important for team bonding and relationship development. Presence of superiority complex prevented me in accepting their feedback that affected the group work. Efficient self-awareness and developing an open and transparent approach in teamwork is efficient in increasing productivity (Reedy et al., 2017). I also did not take any imitative in rehearsing with others. Lack of rehearsing in a team affects final presentation. I also did not take the role of leadership with fear of being accountable. A leader takes effective steps in development of mutual respect and trust among members and ensures every members meeting deadlines (Paratt et al., 2016). As leaders were absent, the teamwork did not shape well. I should have taken the responsibility of leading to prevent such outcomes.

From the reflection, I realized that the teamwork failed because of lack of communication, presence of complexes, lack of emotional attachment, absence of mutual trust and respect and accountability. Absence of coordination and collaborative work output resulted in unimpressive presentation delivery. Therefore, when I would be working in a multidisciplinary team, I would try to be careful in the mentioned aspects and provide the best service to patients by maintaining all the attributes.

One of the most important skills that I need to develop is effective verbal and non-verbal communication skills. For that, I would be joining workshop in order to develop the communication skills. I also need to stop procrastination behavior and develop time management skills. For effective time management, I would be learning to schedule my work previous night and maintain diaries and set rewards for myself. I also need to develop self-regulation skills for effective teamwork. Researchers suggest that individuals should be participating in meditation and yoga classes and undertake mindfulness therapy for self regulation skill development (McNaughton, 2015)

References:

Casimiro, L. M., Hall, P., Kuziemsky, C., O'Connor, M., & Varpio, L. (2015). Enhancing patient-engaged teamwork in healthcare: An observational case study. Journal of interprofessional care, 29(1), 55-61.

Gittell, J. H., Beswick, J., Goldmann, D., & Wallack, S. S. (2015). Teamwork methods for accountable care: relational coordination and TeamSTEPPS®. Health care management review, 40(2), 116-125.

Gordon, M., Baker, P., Catchpole, K., Darbyshire, D., & Schocken, D. (2015). Devising a consensus definition and framework for non-technical skills in healthcare to support educational design: A modified Delphi study. Medical teacher, 37(6), 572-577.

McNaughton, S. M. (2015). Students' reflections on first-year interprofessional teamwork: Phenomenographic evaluation of function and success. Focus on Health Professional Education: A Multi-disciplinary Journal, 16(3), 86.

Parratt, J. A., Fahy, K. M., Hutchinson, M., Lohmann, G., Hastie, C. R., Chaseling, M., & O’Brien, K. (2016). Expert validation of a teamwork assessment rubric: A modified Delphi study. Nurse education today, 36, 77-85.

Reedy, G. B., Lavelle, M., Simpson, T., & Anderson, J. E. (2017). Development of the Human Factors Skills for Healthcare Instrument: a valid and reliable tool for assessing interprofessional learning across healthcare practice settings. BMJ Simulation and Technology Enhanced Learning, 3(4), 135-141.

Sims, S., Hewitt, G., & Harris, R. (2015). Evidence of a shared purpose, critical reflection, innovation and leadership in interprofessional healthcare teams: a realist synthesis. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 29(3), 209-215.

Weller, J., Boyd, M., & Cumin, D. (2014). Teams, tribes and patient safety: overcoming barriers to effective teamwork in healthcare. Postgraduate medical journal, 90(1061), 149-154.