Care of patients by a multidisciplinary team usually organized under the leadership of a physician; each member of the team has specific responsibilities and the whole team contributes to the care of the patient.
As the manager of such a team, I have been asked to report how my team has performed in the last eighteen months. This requires to some extent measuring the competence of my team.
Competence encompasses knowledge, skills, abilities and traits. It is gained in the healthcare profession through pre-service training and on the job training also. It is quite crucial as a manager to see if a healthcare provider is us in his competence on the job. A provider can have knowledge and skill but use it poorly due to internal factors such as personality traits etc or external factors such as unavailability of drugs , equipment etc.
Challenges in measuring team performance (competence)
In my opinion it would be tough to measure if a team member is providing informational as well as emotional support to a patient and his family. As humans it becomes a little difficult to be supportive to all patients at all times of their emotional and physical breakdowns. This also depends on the personality of the healthcare provider. He may be particularly good in his treatment but may have an indifferent attitude where emotional support is required. How to measure the performance of such a team member?
Another problem in measuring team performance may be to measure whether team members are effectively managing rapidly changing situations in a patient’s health. Not all team members may have the ability to grasp and match the demands of emergencies whereas they are not bad health care providers at all. Wouldn’t it be unfair to rate their performance as poor just because of a weak personality trait.
Yet another problem that I think I might face is to rate the performance of team members who do not have the ability to work in co-ordination with other team members. Some members do not show acceptance of all other team members which gives rise to a tens working atmosphere and may lead to some uncalled for situations. However again, here it is not the competency of the provider that is weak, it is his ability. Should that be counted as a negative?
Moreover it is quite a challenge to measure a team member’s personal motivation level as well as identify reasons for his de motivation (if any).some healthcare providers are competent enough to perform a certain medical procedure but are just not willing to spend a lot of time on their patient.
Since providing health to patients is the primary concern, targets or results to be produced are not always stated hence making it all the more difficult to measure performance. Even if targets are given for instance, the target may not be quantifiable for e.g. how healthy did the patient get…that is quite tough to measure.
These are the anticipated challenges of measuring team performance. Even though my team may be very competent and knowledgeable, I may encounter some of these issues in analyzing performance.
Work Cited
Neeraj Kak & Mary Ann Cooper,Issue Paper “Measuring Competencies of Healthcare Providers”
Summary of a technical meeting “measuring provider performance, challenges and definitions” The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Web.
Jack Zigon, “How To Measure Team Performance” The performance management series. Web.