Belbin Team Roles Inventory was created to define the main roles that an individual can perform according to his or her characteristics, interests, and personal qualities. It allows a person to understand and identify the designation better to be more functional in the work of the team (Gopee & Galloway, 2013). Moreover, the awareness of the specific role an individual could perform helps to understand the particular personal qualities as well as to determine the part of assignment or activity in which a person would be the least useful and functional. It can be argued that the application of the Belbin test to healthcare settings could enable improving the quality of teamwork and make the environment safer.
Reflection
According to the evaluation results, I am a team worker. The main features of this team member are diplomacy, the ability to listen to the views of others, and sensitivity towards people and various occurrences. Moreover, the importance of such a player in the team is reflected in the idea that he or she can ameliorate or prevent conflicts within the working group effectively and is responsive to the current situation. Also, the main function of this member is a supportive role in the team. This designation involves orientation on relationships between people within the group to maintain a favorable internal atmosphere. In its turn, this is one of the most important aspects as effective cooperation brings positive results due to the team’s cohesion (Jelphs, Dickinson, & Miller, 2016).
Also, the team worker assumes the role of direct support to the formal leader. By eliminating the possible conflicts, the team worker helps the leader to achieve tasks faster and more sufficiently. However, this part involves some complexity. For instance, a team player may be indecisive in the moments of crisis. Apart from that, due to integral characteristics, this type of team member might not always be liable for executing autonomy. Thus, team workers need to learn the methods to become more autonomous and initiative. Nevertheless, people belonging to this group successfully furnish the support of fellow workers and can perform supervision when necessary.
Quality and Safety in Healthcare
Belbin Inventory is a useful tool to be applied to healthcare working teams to critically evaluate and enhance their performance for the care provider to be quality and safe (Mitchell, 2013). It should be noted that if members of the working unit are not knowledgeable of their responsibilities or assume them to be different, it can result in miscommunication or consequences including poor patient outcomes (Jelphs et al., 2016). The delegation of tasks and responsibilities is a complicated task, which requires the accountability of each member and commitment. Therefore, the results of the Belbin test could improve the performance of teams in a way that each individual is aware of his or her assignments and responsibilities and complies with them within the limits of the expertise. That is to say, if members know what is required from them, it will be easier to build on the quality performance of each healthcare employee.
Therefore, it can be assumed that clear goals and role delineation are the key aspects of the effective performance of working units. To be more precise, such an approach would allow setting clear objectives within the specific healthcare framework so that each individual can furnish care according to his or her tasks so that the team could be more functional.
Moreover, it will ensure that a tailored approach to management is achieved (Gopee & Galloway, 2013). Further on, it should be emphasized that Belbin is helpful to identify the current needs of the team. For instance, it is rather frequent when a team has more shapers and lacks team workers. In such an occurrence, the team might experience a need for clear direction and task delegation. Moreover, there would be few employees responsible for the completion and, consequently, such misbalance might lead to poorer quality of care provision or negligence of some auxiliary activities (Mitchell, 2013). It can be assumed that the team could benefit from the Belbin test so that each member has specific tasks and there are no weak units.
Importance of Team
Teamwork is an essential part of contemporary healthcare provision since it ensures a holistic and comprehensive approach towards care since care is becoming increasingly complex. Moreover, the nursing staff needs to learn new emerging methods rapidly, and the current setting requires employees to take a multidisciplinary approach to aid due to the varied health statuses of patients. Therefore, a feasible and effective collaboration of staff is the key to positive patient outcomes (Armstrong Persily, 2013). Needless to say, many patients have complex diseases that require immediate medical attention from various specialists and members of nursing units. For that reason, it becomes evident that workers need to be aware of effective collaboration practices. More importantly, a functional team is capable of eliminating the possible medical errors, which is one of the critical issues in the majority of contemporary healthcare institutions (Weiss, Tilin, & Morgan, 2013). Another important feature of teamwork is the possibility to decrease nurse burnout and, as a consequence, the projected turnover through the sufficient cooperation of clinical specialists.
Challenges
According to Belbin Framework, a team might face different challenges in the healthcare industry if the unit is not balanced or if several workers accomplish the same actions simultaneously. If the team does not have varied preferences or strength, the collaboration will not be effective since some of the roles will remain unfulfilled (Armstrong Persily, 2013). Notably, researchers stress out that since the healthcare industry is highly challenging and demanding, individuals need to be flexible and should be capable of multitasking and performing different roles as per the current situation.
Therefore, employees should be able to substitute each other or take on different activities when the situation requires so. Moreover, one of the main challenges is the correct or appropriate definition of roles (Mosser & Begun, 2013). If it is not done properly, it can result in medical errors and nurse turnover due to the excessive workload of some employees and lack of autonomy in others. To be able to eliminate or avoid the emergence of such issues, each member of the team should have particular communicative skills and be able to collaborate with diverse specialists with due respect, tolerance, and understanding. In this case, the team dynamics would change for the better resulting in higher commitment and integrity.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that the current health care setting requires a team of specialists to collaborate sufficiently to ensure that a patient receives the best of help. Effective communication and role delineation come to the forefront in terms of effective teamwork. Team building efforts are essential for achieving better patient and nursing outcomes as well as for retaining staff and lowering employee turnover. Moreover, sufficient collaboration of employees ensures quality care and a safer setting. Belbin Team Roles Inventory is a helpful tool to evaluate and boost team performance to make it harmonious, feasible, and effective.