Health Care as a Team Sport?—Studying Athletics to Improve Interprofessional Collaboration

Organizations value teamwork and collaboration as they strive to build culture and attain their goals and objectives. Sports provide a useful and easily accessible means to study teamwork. Interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP) has been identified as a means of improving patient and population health outcomes. Principles of teamwork in sports can inform health professionals and organizations regarding possible improvement strategies and barriers in the optimization of IPCP. Twenty-eight delegates from the 2017 All Together Better Health Conference in Oxford, UK participated in a World Café to discuss the how teamwork in sports can inform IPCP in healthcare and sports medicine. These discussions were captured, transcribed and coded using the domains developed by the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) along with extrapersonal or interpersonal loci. Extrapersonal factors regarding structure of leadership, roles and organizational commitment can be positive factors to promote teamwork. However, interpersonal factors affecting communication, values and lack of commitment to collaboration can serve as barriers. Athletic trainers and other sports medicine professionals can serve as valuable members of interprofessional teams and teamwork is essential in the field of sports medicine.