Practice and Assessment of a Team-Building Approach for Team Medical Care Performance from the Viewpoint of Positive Belief in Cooperation among Japanese Nurses

Abstract

Objective: The team-building approach for medical staff is a practical intervention that is commonly held to promote team medical care performance, most significantly by promoting a positive belief in cooperation. However, a very limited number of studies have shown statistical evidence for this effect. The present study therefore used a before-andafter comparison of belief in cooperation scores to examine the effects of a 2-day team-building program for nurses.

Materials and Methods: A total of 40 Japanese nurses (6 men, 34 women) participated in this study. The “Belief in Cooperation Scale”, which includes three subscales—“usefulness of cooperation,” “individual preference,” and “concerns about inequity”—to evaluate belief in cooperation before and after nurses participated in a team-building program.

Results: The paired t-test showed a significantly higher score in the “usefulness of cooperation (p<.001)” subscale and significantly lower scores in the “individual preference (p<.001)” and “concerns about inequity (p<.001)” subscales after the program. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test also rejected the null hypothesis (p<.001).

Conclusions: These results indicated that the team-building approach was effective in promoting a positive belief in cooperation among Japanese nurses. We believe that these primary findings will enable the development of a practical evidence-based study in the future.