Training an Interdisciplinary Team in Communication and Decision-Making Skills

The use of interdisciplinary teams to address human service delivery issues is becoming increasingly common. Complicated problems require the expertise of a variety of specialists from different disciplines, and increased specialization brings with it a heightened needfor interdisciplinary collaboration. While team meetings are expected to serve as the vehicle for successful collaboration among professionals, three barriers often stand in the way of effective team interactions: disorganization, misunderstandings, and problem-solving difficulties. These problems suggest a need for interventions aimed at improving team communication and decision-making processes, as well as a need for methods to observe and evaluate the effects of such interventions on a team's functioning. The purpose of this research was twofold: First, we sought to investigate the effects of an intervention that differentially targeted and trained three sets of group communication and decision-making skills aimed at addressing the three barriers mentioned above. A second goal was to develop new methods of observation that would overcome several serious limitations which have characterized the bulk of existing team intervention research. An interdisciplinary rehabilitation clinic's staff served as the subject of the study. Using a multiple baseline design across categories of behaviors, the effects of a three-part intervention on the team's day-to-day meeting behavior was assessed. While there was substantial variability and overlap in much of the data, videotaped observations revealed that following each training session, there were modest increases in the average frequency of use of most targeted behaviors. Social validation data indicated that team members found the training to be both useful and enjoyable. Implications forfuture research are discussed.