Modern sjukvård har blivit fragmenterad vilket medför nackdelar för patienter och personal. Teamarbete över professionsgränserna har identifierats som ett sätt att motverka fragmentering och erbjuda god heltäckande vård. Detta har relevans för hörselvården där många patienter behöver insatser från olika professioner. Arbetets syfte var att göra en kartläggning av teamarbete inom svensk offentlig hörselvård samt att undersöka hur teamarbetet ser ut. En totalundersökning har gjorts av Sveriges 21 landsting/regioner. Strukturerade intervjuer har genomförts med personer med kunskap om teamarbete inom varje landsting/region. Resultatet visar att teamarbete förekommer inom samtliga landsting/regioner men att både antalet team och deras arbetssätt varierar. De vanligaste är barnteam och team för hörselnedsättning och ytterligare funktionsnedsättning. De flesta team gör målsättning, planering och utvärdering gemensamt. I två av tre team uppges teammedlemmarna delvis kunna ersätta varandra. Olika professioner förekommer i hörselvårdens team. De som förekommer i störst utsträckning är audionomer, pedagoger och kuratorer. 69 % av teamen har en formell teamledare. Audionomer, läkare, kuratorer respektive chefer är teamledare i ungefär samma utsträckning. Interprofessionella aspekter dominerar men det går inte att kategorisera teamen som multi-, inter- eller tvärprofessionella då deras arbetssätt överlappar. Teamarbete upplevs som väsentligt i den offentliga hörselvården och anses fördelaktigt för både patienter och personal.

When the population is getting older, the need for complex care and nursing interventions in elderly care increases. To create a holistic view of the elder and their life situation, interprofessional team collaboration is often desirable and necessary. Teamwork is often described in positive terms, but previous research has shown that this work method is complicated and requires constant reflection and development. The purpose of this study was to investigate how elderly care teamwork is formed in the interaction between representatives of different professionals. To accomplish this purpose, we have studied how the team members define a well-functioning teamwork and difficulties, and how consensus is achieved in the team. This qualitative case-study combines observation and semi-structured interviews with five informants from different professions working together in an elderly care team: one manager, one assistance case worker, one nurse, one physiotherapist and one of the nursing staff. The results of the study were then analyzed with the terms domain consensus and domain conflict taken from the new institutionalism. The study shows that the informants define a well-functioning teamwork as a work method where openness and mutual respect towards each other’s competence, creates a better holistic view of the elder and their needs. The informants also present teamwork difficulties as disagreements and gabble. The study finally suggests that there is a consensus regarding teamwork goals, and regarding who is entitled to claim knowledge in the different fields of the working area. / I takt med en åldrande befolkning ökar också behovet av komplexa vård- och omsorgsinsatser inom äldreomsorgen. Detta leder till att interprofessionell teamsamverkan i många fall är önskvärd och nödvändig för att skapa en helhetssyn över den äldre och dennes livssituation. Teamarbete beskrivs ofta i positiva ordalag, men tidigare forskning har visat att detta arbetssätt är komplicerat och kräver ständig reflektion och utveckling. Vårt syfte med denna studie har varit att studera hur teamarbete i äldreomsorgen formas i samspelet mellan representanter av olika yrkesgrupper. För att uppnå detta syfte har vi studerat hur teamets aktörer definierar ett väl fungerande teamarbete och svårigheter, samt på vilket sätt det råder samförstånd i teamet. Vi har genomfört en kvalitativ fallstudie där vi genom observation och fem intervjuer med yrkesgrupperna enhetschef, biståndshandläggare, sjuksköterska, sjukgymnast och undersköterska har studerat ett team inom äldreomsorgen. Studiens resultat analyserades sedan utifrån begreppen domänkonsensus och domänkonflikt hämtade ur den nyinstitutionella teorin. Studien visar att informanterna definierar ett väl fungerande teamarbete som ett arbetssätt där öppenhet och respekt gentemot varandras kompetenser bidrar till en ökad helhetssyn över den äldre och dennes behov. Informanterna beskrev i sina intervjuer även att svårigheter i form av meningsskiljaktigheter och ”kackel” kan förekomma. Studien visar slutligen att det råder samförstånd gällande teamarbetets mål, samt gällande vem som har rätt att göra anspråk på de olika kunskaperna inom verksamhetsområdet.

Många människor lever idag med långvarig smärta som påverkar deras vardag och orsakar stort lidande. Relationen mellan arbetsterapeuten och patienten är alltid avgörande för om arbetsterapin blir lyckad eller inte. Antalet anmälningar till patientnämnden har ökat och hälso- och sjukvårdslagens krav på att patienter ska bli bemötta med respekt och öppenhet uppfylls inte. Syftet var att beskriva arbetsterapeuters upplevelse av bemötandet av personer med långvarig smärta. En kvalitativ metod användes och urvalet gjordes genom lämplighet och snöbollssampling. Tio stycken arbetsterapeuter med erfarenheter av arbete med den aktuella gruppen intervjuades utifrån en intervjuguide. En kvalitativ innehållsanalys genomfördes på samtliga intervjuer. Resultatet ledde fram till följande kategorier: bidragande faktorer till ett gott bemötande och svårigheter för ett gott bemötande. Slutsatser som kan dras är att ett gott bemötande av personer med långvarig smärta innefattar att arbetsterapeuten lyssnar och bekräftar patientens berättelse. Det krävs en ökad kunskap inom området för att öka förståelsen och förbättra bemötandet av gruppen. / Occupational therapists experiences of meeting people with chronic pain Today many people live with chronic pain that affects their everyday lives and cause great suffering. The relationship between the occupational therapist and patient is always crucial if therapy is successful or not. Lately, the number of reports to the Board has increased and the requirements of the health care law concerning addressing people with respect are not met. The aim of this study was to describe the occupational therapists experience of meeting people with chronic pain. A qualitative methodology was used and the selection was made regarding suitability and snowball sampling. Ten occupational therapists with experience of working with this group were interviewed. A qualitative content analysis was made on all interviews. Categories that emerged in the result were: contributing factors to a good meeting and difficulties for a good meeting. In order to create a good meeting it is of importance that the occupational therapist listens and confirms the patient´s story. However, further knowledge is necessary in order to increase the understanding of this group.

This thesis hypothesizes that providing task specific information to individual team members will improve coordination and decision-making, and therefore team performance, at time critical tasks. Major themes addressed in this research include teams and team processes, mental models, team mental models, work domain analysis, and hierarchical task analysis. Furthermore, the theory behind the development of complementary models is introduced. A unique method to identify the information sources and requirements in a complex team environment is first discussed in general and then specifically applied in two domains. The findings are presented of two experiments examining the effects of imposing different information distribution strategies that range from no complementariness to full complementariness of information. Team communication, team and individual task performance, workload, and timeliness and effectiveness of team decision making were assessed in nominal and off-nominal conditions. The first experiment used an automobile simulator and examined team navigation while driving. A second experiment was designed to incorporate additional measures to more specifically investigate individual performance, team workload, and clarity of information requirements using a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter simulator. The procedures used for both experiments provided for dynamic yet controlled environments through which critical factors that influence team process and performance could be evaluated accurately. Results of these experiments provide empirical evidence that providing task relevant information to individual team members in a time critical environment, while limiting their access to non-relevant information, improves individual and team performance. Furthermore, there is evidence of increased individual performance that indicates this method of distributing information among team members may provide individual crewmembers with a more accurate task relevant mental model of their own environment. This research provides new insight into how the distribution of information among team members effects the development of mental models, information requirements, team and individual performance, and communications, and highlights several directions for future research. The information distribution design principles presented in this thesis address the heterogeneity of teams; teams cannot be thought of as groups of identical individuals. The results concerning the communication, workload, performance and team of mental models were consistent across the domains in this research.

Manufacturing companies are searching for new techniques day by day to launch qualified products with a competitive price to the market. Companies believe in the importance of teams which have members coming from different disciplines who use their knowledge, experiences, and creativity for achieving the goals of their teams. The purpose of this study is to explore the effectiveness of teamwork for successful product development process by focusing on the relationship between the team members &ndash / especially engineers&rsquo / and industrial designers&rsquo / relation. After a broad literature survey, a descriptive-survey study that aims demonstrating the relationship between engineers and industrial designers in manufacturing companies in Turkey is held in order to investigate the effectiveness of teamwork in product development process. A twelve item questionnaire which has four open-ended questions and eight Likert-scaled statements has been prepared. As the result of this study, a positive relationship is found between the performance of product development team and the effects of cooperation, social and professional communication, having clear and common goals, sharing knowledge and experiences, leadership, coordination and cooperative problem solving and decision making processes to the relationship between engineers and industrial designers.

Psychological studies have shown that information exchange is a key component of effective teamwork. In addition to requesting information that they need for their tasks, members of effective teams often proactively forward information that they believe other teammates require to complete their tasks. We refer to this type of communication as proactive information exchange and the formalization and implementation of this is the subject of this thesis. The important question that we are trying to answer is: under normative conditions, what types of information needs can agent teammates extract from shared plans and how can they use these information needs to proactively forward information to teammates? In the following, we make two key claims about proactive information exchange: first, agents need to be aware of the information needs of their teammates and that these information needs can be inferred from shared plans; second, agents need to be able to model the beliefs of others in order to deliver this information efficiently. To demonstrate this, we have developed an algorithm named PIEX, which, for each agent on a team, reasonably approximates the information-needs of other team members, based on analysis of a shared team plan. This algorithm transforms a team plan into an individual plan by inserting coomunicative tasks in agents' individual plans to deliver information to those agents who need it. We will incorporate a previously developed architecture for multi-agent belief reasoning. In addition to this algorithm for proactive information exchange, we have developed a formal framework to both describe scenarios in which proactive information exchange takes place and to evaluate the quality of the communication events that agents running the PIEX algorithm generate. The contributions of this work are a formal and implemented algorithm for information exchange for maintaining a shared mental model and a framework for evaluating domains in which this type of information exchange is useful.

Background: Surgical complications has been the main cause of medical injuries and deaths worldwide. In 2008 WHO developed the checklist for safe surgery to reduce the number of surgical complications. The objective of the checklist is to strengthen already established safety routines and contribute to better cooperation and communication. Research shows that compliance to the checklist is deficient, which can affect patient safety. Aim: The aim was to study the extent to which theatre nurses participate in the use of the checklist. Method: Observational study was conducted with a descriptive design and quantitative approach. 24 observations were carried out with aid of an observation protocol of two surgical units at a hospital in central Sweden. Result: The results showed that Timeout initiated widely but compliance to all items was considerably lower. Team member introductions, patient ID, planned surgery and antibiotic prophylaxis had highest compliance. Theatre nurse responsibilities in Timeout, particularly sterility and positioning of the patient had low compliance. During Sign In the majority of theatre nurses greeted the patient in the operating room and everyone performed skin control. One theatre nurse asked the patient about allergies/intolerance. The theatre nurses participated rarely in Sign Out. Conclusions: The study showed that there are large differences in compliance between items of the checklist. Theatre nurses can increase their participation by being more involved in the surgical team communication and thus clearly demonstrate her responsibilities in the perioperative nursing. Revisited routines and continuous monitoring may be needed for increased checklist compliance

The purpose of this research was to investigate the role of leadership in creating high performance software development teams. Of specific interest were the challenges faced by the Project Manager without a software engineering background. These challenges included management of a non-visible process, planning projects with significant uncertainty, and working with teams that don’t trust their leadership. Conclusions were drawn from the author’s experience as a software development manager facing these problems and a broad literature review of experts from the software and knowledge worker management fields. The primary conclusion was that, until the next big breakthrough, gains in software development productivity resulting from technology are limited. The only way for a group to distinguish itself as performing at the highest levels is teamwork enabled by good leadership. / text

Heterogeneous multi-agent systems are currently used in a wide variety of situations, including search and rescue, military applications, and off-world exploration, however it is difficult to understand the actions of these systems or naturalistically assign these mixed teams to tasks. These agents, which may be human, robot or software, have different capabilities but will need to coordinate effectively with humans in order to operate. The first and largest contributing factor to this challenge is the processing, understanding and representing of elements of the natural world in a manner that can be utilized by artificial agents. A second contributing factor is that current abstractions and robot architectures are ill-suited to address this problem. This dissertation addresses the lack of a high-level abstraction for the naturalistic coordination of teams of heterogeneous robots, humans and other agents through the development of roles. Roles are a fundamental concept of social science that may provide this necessary abstraction. Roles are not a new concept and have been used in a number of related areas. This work draws from these fields and constructs a coherent and usable model of roles for robotics. This research is focussed on answering the following question: Can the use of social roles enable the naturalistic coordinated operation of robots in a mixed setting? In addition to this primary question, related research includes defining the key concepts important to artificial systems, providing a mapping and implementation from these concepts to a usable robot framework and identifies a set of robot-specific roles used for human-robot interaction. This research will benefit both the artificial intelligence agent and robotics communities. It poses a fundamental contribution to the multi-agent community because it extends and refines the role concept. The application of roles in a principled and complete implementation is a novel contribution to both software and robotic agents. The creation of an open source operational architecture which supports taskable robots is also a major contribution.

Sjuksköterskor ifrågasätter ibland sin närvaro under ronden och för motivation krävs förståelse för yrkesrollens betydelse. Trots rondens potential för vårdutveckling saknar den erkännande som ett viktigt forskningsområde. Syftet var att studera ronden som företeelse på sjukhus. En litteraturstudie grundad på 13 artiklar utfördes. Resultatet belyser att ronden skedde på rutin, aldrig ställdes in samt innehade främst tre funktioner: planering och utvärdering av patientvården, en pedagogisk funktion samt en samordnande funktion. Rondens upplägg påverkade patienters upplevelse och delaktighet. Sjuksköterskor kände sig ofta exkluderade, hade svårigheter att förmedla information och bidrog sällan till beslutsfattandet. Sjuksköterskans bidrag under ronden var nödvändigt och höjde patientsäkerheten. Gemensamma verktyg för kommunikation, dokumentation och riskanalyser inom vårdteamet har utvecklats för att förbättra ronden. Det förekom att patienter och vårdpersonal var missnöjda med upplägget av ronden och i båda grupperna fanns de som kände oro under ronden samt hade bristfällig kunskap om dess innebörd och syfte. Ronden bör därför lyftas i utbildningen och studenter tränas i att kommunicera med andra inom vårdteamet. Yrkesverksamma bör främja patienters delaktighet och förståelse under ronden. Kommande forskning bör utgå från ett omvårdnadsperspektiv och riktas mot hur ronden kan användas som ett effektivt arbetsverktyg och hur teamarbete kan uppmuntras. / Nurses sometimes question their presence during the ward round and understanding of the importance of their professional role is required as motivation. In spite of the ward rounds’ potential for care development it lacks recognition as an important research area. The aim was to study the ward round as a phenomenon. A literature review was conducted using 13 papers. The findings reveal that the ward round was conducted as a routine part and was never cancelled. It consisted of mainly three functions; planning and evaluation of the patient care, a pedagogical function and a coordinating function. The format affected patients experience and participation. Nurses often felt excluded, experienced difficulties in providing information and rarely contributed to decision making. Nurses’ contribution in the ward round was essential and increased patient safety. Common tools for communication, documentation and risk analysis within the care team have been developed to improve the ward round. There were patients and staffs who were dissatisfied with the format and there existed anxiousness during the ward round and lack of knowledge about the meaning and purpose in both groups. The ward round needs to be highlighted in education and students need to practice communication with other care team members. Professionals should promote patient participation and understanding during the ward round. Future research should include a nursing perspective and address how the ward round could be used as an effective tool and how to promote teamwork.