HLTH 3105 Team Project Overview
An important component of this course is the Team Project. The project has two primary goals.
The first goal is to help you understand how an interdisciplinary patient-care team functions. You and your team will create a hypothetical case of a patient presenting with certain signs and symptoms. As a group, you will discuss the case and design an interdisciplinary healthcare team to provide appropriate and effective treatment for that individual. As the course proceeds, you will develop and refine the dimensions of the treatment plan, identify the roles and functions of team members, describe how team members will interact, identify the environmental context of care, and address many other details involved in an interdisciplinary team approach to health care. Each team will also create a Microsoft PowerPoint® presentation summarizing its approach and documenting your group’s strategy and progress.
The second goal of the project is to give you practical experience as a working team member. This exercise should help you develop a greater understanding of the demands and rewards of working on a team. It will develop your skills of collaboration, leadership, responsibility, accountability, and teamwork. The team skills you develop in this course will be useful, not only in delivering healthcare to patients, but in many other circumstances and situations in your life and career.
In the first week of the course, your Instructor will divide the class alphabetically into teams of three to five students. Teams will be labeled “Team A,” “Team B,” etc. Once you are assigned to your team, you will have access to a dedicated discussion area for your specific team under the Team Areas tab. It is here where you will be able to communicate and collaborate with your colleagues to complete this project. The “Live Meetings” function is also active in this course, so you are welcome to use this tool. You are also encouraged to communicate in real time with software like Skype, Facetime, and Zoom, but minutes should be taken during every team communication and meeting to submit within your Blackboard Team Area. Use the template that is provided to collect the minutes. When scheduling meetings, be sure to include every team member in your communications, and please be cognizant of the different time zones in which your team members live.
Keep in mind that your level of involvement in the Team Project will be evaluated by your peers at the end of the course. Additionally, your Instructor will monitor your team’s progress, communication, and interchanges in the designated team area. Your own success, as well as your team’s, will depend in large part on your continued engagement and contributions throughout the coming weeks, as well as how you conduct yourself as a team member.
When people work together on a team, it’s not unusual for honest, creative differences to occur. That’s just the nature of the collaborative process. It’s important to recognize, however, that the value of your contribution to your team is not just a function of the ideas you suggest or how well you articulate them. Equally important is how you react to and manage conflict—how well you work with others. Working on a team means working for the team. Part of your responsibility is to be an agent of progress, not an obstacle.
A significant portion of your evaluation for your work on your team’s project will be your Instructor’s assessment of the manner with which you conducted yourself while working on the team. As mentioned earlier, an important purpose of this exercise is to give you practical experience in working on a team. In this course, as in all your work at Walden, it is expected that you will treat your colleagues with kindness, respect, and civility.
In the unlikely event there are lapses in personal behavior, your Instructor has the latitude and authority to reassign students. Any breach of protocol or unprofessional behavior will be reflected in a student’s final grade.
You, and all students, are held to the standards detailed in the Walden University Code of Conduct relating to your communication and interactions with others in the University community. Those standards are outlined in the Walden Student Handbook. Any Code of Conduct violation, including harassment, discrimination, academic dishonesty, profanity, or unprofessional behavior may result in formal action taken by the Instructor, fellow student, or the Program Director.
Patient Case Study—An Interdisciplinary Solution (A PowerPoint Presentation)
Beginning this week, and over the course of this term, your team will consider a patient case study beginning with the designation of a hypothetical patient suffering from a specific problem, disease, or condition. You and your team will then build an interdisciplinary team ideally suited to treat that patient. You will define treatment and recommendations given by each of the health professionals you include in your team identified in your “Team Roles and Functions” table.
In addition to identifying the composition of your healthcare team, you will determine other characteristics, such as the team processes, the nature of the team’s tasks, and the environmental context.
You will use Microsoft PowerPoint software to create a 10- to 12-slide presentation that includes the following information:
An introduction to the presentation that summarizes the health problem and any related background information
Roles and functions of each member of the healthcare team
The sequence of care from the first health professional consulted to the last
Successes and setbacks the patient may reasonably be expected to experience in the course of his or her care
Presumed benefits of taking an interdisciplinary approach in this instance
Details on other salient characteristics of the team, such as:
Team processes
The nature of the team’s tasks
The environmental context of the treatment (i.e., where the services were located)
Conclusion
Summary of the strategy, tasks, deliberations, mechanics, and processes your group followed in completing the Team Project
You should also include one or more reference slides in APA format.
How your team organizes itself and works to create this presentation will be entirely up to you and your teammates to decide.
