A History of Teamwork in Mental Health and Its Implications for Teamwork Training and Education in Gerontology

The History of Teamwork’s Societal Diffusion

“…Our analysis of the number of academic articles on teamwork is only partly consistent with these reports. First, the peak in research on teams and teamwork in the 1950s (Ryan, 1996;Simpson & Wood, 1992) appears less pronounced in our analyses, as could have been expected, given the impression created in reviews of team research during that time (e.g., Brown, 1982;Cannon-Bowers & Bowers, 2011;Ryan, 1996;Simpson & Wood, 1992). As explained above, we deliberately focused our analyses on the terms relating to teamwork, and thus cannot rule out that such early team research might have also referred to groups, rather than teams.…”

“…Thus, the increase of academic efforts devoted to research on teamwork must have appeared to expand notably in the 1950s in relation to the previous situation, but compared with later developments, this increase might appear minuscule. In fact, even the quantitative reviews of the development of teamwork research are based on relative metrics and/or focused on a small number of journals or even single journals (e.g., Moreland et al, 1994; Ryan, 1996; Sanna & Parks, 1997). However, our analyses are at least partially consistent with these reports in psychology and health care concerning the slump in interest in team research in the 1960s and 1970s (Moreland et al, 1994; Sanna & Parks, 1997; Steiner, 1974), and the following increase starting in the mid-1970s and the tremendous rise of teamwork research from the second half of the 1980s on (Cannon-Bowers & Bowers, 2011; Moreland et al, 1994; Sanna & Parks, 1997).…”

“…As the extant literature dealt with the history of teamwork, particularly for the fields of psychology and health care, several reviews reflected this development, and a number of articles and book chapters were specifically devoted to this purpose as well (Baldwin, 2007;Brown, 1982;Cannon-Bowers & Bowers, 2011;Moreland, Hogg, & Hains, 1994;Ryan, 1996;Sanna & Parks, 1997;Simpson & Wood, 1992;Sundstrom et al, 2000). Consistent with each other, these previous accounts of the history of teamwork research report that the study of teamwork had a slow start, some ups and downs in between (Brown, 1982;Cannon-Bowers & Bowers, 2011;Ryan, 1996;Simpson & Wood, 1992), and finally "literally exploded in recent years," now resulting in a "voluminous literature on the subject" (Cannon-Bowers & Bowers, 2011, 0,0000% 0,0001% 0,0002% 0,0003% 0,0004% 0,0005% 0,0006% 1900 1902 1904 1906 1908 1910 1912 1914 1916 1918 1920 1922 1924 1926 1928 1930 1932 1934 1936 1938 1940 1942 1944 1946 1948 1950 1952 1954 1956 1958 1960 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 p. 597). In fact, the pattern of teamwork research in psychology and health care presented in narrative reviews followed strikingly similar patterns, replicating a curvilinear trend line with peaks and lows in parallel order.…”

Structure and Meaning in Multidisciplinary Teamwork

“…The concept of the team approach is pervasive throughout health care and health care literature, particularly among health professionals working with older people (Clarke 1991, Ryan 1996. The value of teamwork is taken for granted by health care professionals, despite the lack of a systematic analysis of its effectiveness (Nagi 1975, Schmitt et al 1988, Hogan 1990).…”

Measuring attitudes related to interdisciplinary training: revisiting the Heinemann, Schmitt and Farrell attitudes toward health care teams scale

“…Team care has also been demonstrated to be effective in mental health settings (Ryan, 1996), rehabilitation (Diller, 1990;Keith, 1991) and in acute care settings (Baggs et al, 1992).…”