BUSI 311 Week 6 Discussion Board Forum 6 Example

Discussion Board Forum 6: Managing Health Professionals and Teams

BUSI 311 Introduction to Healthcare Administration, Discussion Board Forum 6

Thread by [Student Name]

The practice, its teams and the classmates are composites; the textbook, Scripture and the peer-reviewed articles cited are real.

Last winter a patient left our practice without the referral her physician had promised, because the physician told the medical assistant, the assistant assumed the front desk would schedule it and the front desk never heard about it. No one was careless; each person did their own job. That is the problem with a staff that is not a team: everyone does their part, but no one owns the whole. Buchbinder and Shanks (2017) describe how health care organizations depend on professionals with very different training and status, and how managers must build teamwork deliberately rather than assume it will happen.

Research shows why that effort matters. Miri et al. (2026) reviewed 33 studies and found that 22 linked nurses' positive perceptions of teamwork to better outcomes for nurses, including job attitudes and retention, safety attitudes and lower stress, and that teamwork was also associated with better patient outcomes. Chen et al. (2026) synthesized 29 qualitative studies of operating room teams and found teamwork thrived where members were skilled, knew one another's roles, had worked together before, shared a focus on patients and had good leaders, while individualistic behavior, hierarchy and insufficient resources undermined it.

Those findings shaped two changes. First, every morning each physician meets for ten minutes with the assistant, nurse and front desk staff member working that day to review the schedule, flag patients who need referrals or forms and agree on who will do what. Second, we pair each physician with the same medical assistant for at least three months, so they learn each other's habits. After three months, missed referrals tracked by our referral coordinator fell from about twelve a month to three, and two assistants told me they finally felt like part of the care team. The huddles cost each physician ten minutes a day, which they recovered in fewer interruptions and callbacks.

Paul compared the church to a body with many members, each needed by the others, so that no part can tell another it is not needed (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, 1 Corinthians 12:21). A practice works as a team only when every role knows what the others are doing and why it matters.

Reply to Olivia

Olivia, you wrote that your huddles fail because physicians talk and everyone else listens. Hierarchy is one of the strongest barriers in the research, and it is understandable: physicians carry final responsibility, and staff are used to deferring to them. Chen et al. (2026) identified hierarchical culture as a major obstacle to teamwork, alongside individualistic behavior, and found that effective leadership and a shared, patient-centered focus helped teams overcome it over time. Martínez (2026) argues that peer accountability, in which every member is responsible for upholding shared standards and speaking up, explains much of why the same safety tools succeed on some teams and fail on others. In a huddle dominated by one voice, that kind of accountability cannot develop, because the people who notice problems first, often assistants and front desk staff, learn that their observations are not wanted. Over time they stop offering them, and the team loses its early warning system.

One practical step is to have a medical assistant or nurse lead the huddle, with the physician speaking last, and to end with a question to every member: is there anything that worries you about today? Jesus taught that whoever would be great among his disciples must be their servant (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Mark 10:43). Physicians who model that by listening first can change a team's culture quickly, and staff notice the difference within days. Would your physicians agree to try a rotating huddle leader for a month and then ask the whole team whether the meetings felt different?

Reply to Calvin

Calvin, your clinic is hiring two nurse practitioners and a physician assistant and wondering how to fit them into existing teams. You are not alone; Singh et al. (2026) found that primary care practices acquired by private equity firms increased their numbers of advanced practice providers faster than physicians, which reflects a national shift in how primary care is staffed and one that many independent practices are following as well. Adding new professionals changes everyone's roles, not only theirs, and Chen et al. (2026) found that unclear roles and unfamiliar teammates undermine teamwork, while role awareness and familiarity support it. Miri et al. (2026) also link good teamwork to retention, so how you integrate these new clinicians may affect whether they stay. New advanced practice providers often leave when they feel unsupported or unsure of their role, and replacing them is costly for a small clinic.

I would suggest a short written description, agreed with the physicians, of what each clinician will handle, who supervises whom and how patients will be assigned, shared with the whole staff before the new clinicians start, and a two-week period of shadowing so assistants and front desk staff learn their habits and preferences. Ecclesiastes notes that two are better than one, because if they fall, one will lift up the other (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Ecclesiastes 4:9-10). Has your clinic decided whether the new clinicians will have their own assistants or share them? That single decision often shapes whether the new team feels integrated or tacked on to the old one.

References

Buchbinder, S. B., & Shanks, N. H. (2017). Introduction to health care management (3rd ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Chen, Y., Zhang, Y., Zhang, J., & Luo, J. (2026). Facilitators of and barriers to teamwork between operating room nurses and other practitioners: A meta-synthesis of qualitative studies. BMJ Open, 16(4), e098386. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2024-098386

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Martínez, M. (2026). Peer accountability in patient safety: An under-examined determinant of team performance. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 38(3), mzag134. https://doi.org/10.1093/intqhc/mzag134

Miri, F., Hajizadeh, A., Arefnezhad, M., Alipour, R., Saeidpour, J., Roh, Y. S., & Kakemam, E. (2026). The association between nurses' perceptions of teamwork and nurse and patient outcomes in hospital settings: A systematic review. Journal of Nursing Management, 2026(1), e3356709. https://doi.org/10.1155/jonm/3356709

Singh, Y., Dixit, M. N., Trivedi, A. N., & Whaley, C. M. (2026). Private equity acquisitions in primary care: Changes in utilization, spending, and workforce. Health Affairs, 45(6), 629-636. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2025.01703