van Diggele, C., Roberts, C. orcid.org/0000-0001-8613-682X and Lane, S. (2022) Leadership behaviours in interprofessional student teamwork. BMC Medical Education, 22 (1). 834. ISSN 1472-6920
Abstract
Background
Effective leaders support high-quality patient care and improve patient safety by embodying a collective leadership style. Training in leadership skills needs to be integrated longitudinally throughout a clinician’s career. Models of leadership drawn from organisational theories can provide a conceptual framework for cultivating student leadership qualities during teamwork and the evaluation of emergent outcomes. Using the conceptual framework of Situational Leadership Theory, we sought to explore the leadership qualities identified by students of their team members, during a large scale interprofessional learning activity.
Methods
In 2018, 1674 students from 11 health disciplines were required to participate in the “Health Collaboration Challenge” (HCC). The HCC required students to work in small interprofessional teams of five or six students. Following team activities, students were required to provide constructive written feedback to their team members. Peer feedback data were coded and categorised into themes using the conceptual framework of Situational Leadership Theory. Data were then quantified within each theme.
Results
A total of 1282 comments were analysed. The most frequent comments related to ‘delegating’ (456/1282, 36%) and ‘supporting’ (402/1282, 31%). This was followed by comments categorised as ‘directing’ (244/1282, 19%), and ‘coaching’ (180/1282, 14%) leadership styles. Notably, a total of 1112/2597 (43%) of comments were unconstructive. A total of 298 comments provided by students informed their peers of areas for self-improvement. The most frequent comments were recommendations relating to ‘active team member contribution’ (111/298; 37%), followed by ‘communication’ (83/298; 28%), ‘interprofessional practice’ (77/298; 26%), and ‘disciplinary knowledge’ (27/298; 9%).
Conclusion
Although most students demonstrated a reasonable ability to display leadership behaviours appropriate to teamwork, further development is needed through training. Leadership skills are an expectation of health professional graduates, and should be explicitly taught and vertically integrated within interprofessional education curricula. Further research is warranted in how students contribute to and understand the requirements of leadership within interprofessional teams.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2022. Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
Keywords: | Education; Health professions; Interprofessional; Leadership; Peer review; Teamwork; Humans; Leadership; Students; Mentoring; Peer Group; Curriculum |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health (Sheffield) > The Medical School (Sheffield) > Academic Unit of Medical Education (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 21 Jun 2023 11:18 |
Last Modified: | 21 Jun 2023 11:18 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1186/s12909-022-03923-5 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:200681 |
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