Team Building in Primary Healthcare - A Resource Guide

Developing well-functioning interprofessional teams to enhance patient care is an integral part of a Family Health Team (FHT). Teams bring together individuals from different disciplines, each possessing different experiences and skills, to provide complimentary services, to work collaboratively to address problems faced by patients, and to offer each other support and advice, thereby ensuring the FHT and its programs reflect the breadth of experiences and viewpoints its staff can bring.

The intent of this guide is to assist you and your team to better understand some of its processes and find ways to strengthen team-based care in your FHT. There are two parts to the guide, and they complement each other. Part A is an overview of teambuilding in FHTs (the current guide). Part B provides interprofessional activities to help facilitators work with FHTs to enhance team functioning. The sections and modules are linked between Part A and B, so that each module contains both background information and theory (Part A), and practical tools and resources (Part B). However, the modules themselves are not sequential, and you may start with any module.

All of the modules will be useful to your FHT however some modules will be more applicable to your team at a given time. In order to assess where you are as a Team and what Module will be most relevant, an Audit Tool has been created to assist in deciding where to start. After completing the questionnaire, your results will be automatically calculated and you will be redirected to the appropriate modules.

Click the Part A and Part B modules to download and print the entire guide in Adobe Reader (.pdf) format, or chose individual modules, also in .pdf format.