Is Effective Teamwork a Priority in Canada?
Broadly speaking, health human resources have been a preoccupation for managers and policy makers in Canada’s healthcare systems. Back in 2001, those who were consulted as part of the first Listening for Direction national priority-setting exercise on health services and policy issues said clearly that health human resources would be the number one priority in the next two to five years (Gagnon et al. 2001). With the exception of clinical organizations, which in 2001 were concerned about how new healthcare teams should be composed in order to meet the changing needs of patients, decision makers were preoccupied not with healthy workplaces or effective teamwork but with the supply of health human resources. In particular, federal and provincial policy makers wanted to find mechanisms to help them to avoid cycles of surplus and shortage, while managers wanted to know about forecasting models that might help them plan for these cycles and employ retention and recruitment strategies. In 20
