Improvement Teams

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: The Power of Teams

Part 3: Selecting Members for a Team

Part 4: Defining Roles and Responsibilities

Part 5: Stages of Team Growth

Part 6: Tips from Successful Teams

Part 7: Supporting Information

Part 2: The Power of Teams 

For a QI project to succeed, an organization must use the knowledge, skills, experiences, and perspectives of a wide range of people. A QI project requires problem solving, multiple decisions, and effective solutions that involve complex systems. A comprehensive multidisciplinary approach by a QI team is preferred over individual decision makers, especially when:

• A task is complex

• Creativity is necessary

• The path to improvement is unclear

• Efficient use of resources are required

• Cooperation is essential to implementation

• Team members have a stake in the outcome

• The process involved is cross-functional

• No one individual has sufficient knowledge to solve the problem

An effective improvement team is flexible enough to respond to the ongoing challenges of QI work. Even though a team may assume many roles, this module describes a QI team that is focused on improvement using clinical quality measures.