Atul Gawande: Scrutinizing Team Work

Superior Essays
Collaboration For All
Scrutinizing Teamwork
Smooth and amicable cooperation between two or more individuals is a vital component in any personal or work-based relationship. From previously feuding lovers striving to coalesce the fragments of their broken marriage, to an operating room packed to the brim full of doctors and nurses, working as a team builds unshakeable connections and engenders the most significant of improvements in human interaction. While it is evident that teamwork is beneficial to all affiliated members, it is often a difficult factor to establish and enforce. The reason being is that people do not perceive certain situations in the same manner as their peers, and often remain entirely unaware of such non-mutual perceptions.
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While these lists stress the necessity of taking extreme precaution and serve as a guide during emergencies, they all point out the dire need for proper collaboration. In fact, within Gawande’s checklist, he employs the measure of thoroughly introducing each person involved in surgeries to improve teamwork between all members of his staff. Not only does this induce a sense of familiarity and camaraderie between the employees, it aids specific members of the team in overcoming their differences and gaining a sense of comfortability while working. Consequently, employees become so content with their working environment that Gawande even references their increased rate of retention in his …show more content…
However, while the simplistic act of communicating produces remarkable improvements in nearly every situation, it is a difficult action to maintain, primarily because of differences in sex or status. Within the 1991 film, The Doctor, surgeon Jack MacKee uses his position to his advantage and exhibits a dominant attitude that hampers effectual communication between himself and one of the operating nurses, Nancy. During the opening scene of the movie, clamor floods the operating theater backed by a mellifluous song and laughter while Jack and a mass of other associates encircle an unconscious patient, including Nancy standing at Jack’s side. Throughout the operation, Jack displays a careless and fun-loving attitude and urges Nancy to sing along to the current tune playing on their radio, but Nancy shows no interest. As the surgery progresses, Nancy continues to ignore Jack’s condescending teasing while the other staff members find it to be humorous, encouraging Jack to persist his

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