"Go on!" the professor said looking at me. I was stunned, unable to move, and felt like throwing up. Amanda sitting right next to me looked at me and said: "We are in this together, therefore we'll go through it together."
Before I start, let me give you a brief introduction to scholarly me except for the fact that I am glossophobic…or at least I used to be. I am an international student here at UAB enrolled in a Ph.D. program that started this fall. My exceptional GRE score and a near perfect GPA got me so far really easily. But, that would never tell you about my fear of public speaking. So, here is the real me – a reserved and shy student from halfway across the globe who has always been a behind-the-scene genius.
Now, moving on to how I got myself into that particular situation, well that's an interesting story. The first week at UAB the class was divided into groups of five for a team project. Team projects aren't really fun for someone like me – you have to interact with people, coordinate with them to get something meaningful out. Why do people compromise on the efficiency of the best individuals? Crazy idea ‘teamwork is dream work'. Unfortunately, the nightmare didn't end there; our first assignment was to prepare a twenty-minute talk on ‘Phenylketonuria'. Phenylketonuria – I learned that in eighth grade. The worst part was when the professor mentioned: "I can ask anyone from the group to present and that student's performance would decide the grade for the whole team."
My heart was already racing, my brain calculating the odds of me being chosen to present. At the after class group meeting I offered to make the whole PowerPoint hoping that I would chicken out on the day of presentation by being absent. Amanda, the leader that the other group members agreed to, and which I didn't object to, was adamant that everyone would do it. So that lead us to meet more often during the next three weeks. I surprisingly enjoyed meeting with everyone and the baby steps we took to our progress. Unlike usually being voluntold, I was just tasked to prepare the last five slides.
I also helped to explain the concepts to my group that I already knew so well. Everyone thought I knew it all. But, on the contrary, their questions helped me to actually understand the topic in much more detail. In the end, we all aided one another as everyone had some gaps in their understanding, which my friends filled in with their own knowledge.
On the evening before the day of the presentation, we met to do a mock presentation to make sure everyone was prepared. I presented really well to my friends during the mock. I always did well with people I was familiar with. After that last meeting, I confessed to Amanda my stage fright issue. She convinced me to show up for class the next day as we were the ninth group and there was no chance that everyone before us would finish in one lecture.
On the day, the professor decided to start from the last group presenting first and since two students were absent in that group she skipped them and called out "Phenylketonuria". She looked up and asked, "Who all are in that group?" I was the last to raise my hand. "Go on!" the professor said looking at me. Amanda said, "We are in this together, therefore we'll go through it together."
Amanda stood up and explained that since everyone contributed to make the presentation everyone would like to present. To my awe, the professor liked the idea. We all went up to the podium, though all my teammates were still puzzled as to why Amanda would do that. They started with their part of the presentation, and when it was my turn Amanda whispered, “Think as if it is just your friends.” I started nervously, fumbling through my first few sentences. But, the reassuring glances from friends soon helped me get more confident. By the time I finished, I had completely taken charge. It was a euphoric moment when the class applauded our work. Retrospectively I realized the importance of what had happened in the last few weeks. I had a new group of friends, enjoyed my time doing the assignment, and taken my first step towards overcoming stage fright. I now do believe ‘teamwork is dream work'.
The very first lesson I received when I began at UAB was how to work in a team.
Teamwork is a staple of a university curriculum between study groups and research projects and just attending classes like labs and recitations, but, in the Science and Technology Honors Program, team work is essential. As a part of each and every SciTech class, we were sorted into different groups to accomplish various tasks, whether it was making a concept map that would convey a research concept or crafting a service learning project and presenting its results at the expo. Throughout all of these team activities, both SciTech related and not, I came to learn that there are three types of teamwork experiences. Throughout the rest of this article, the types of teamwork experiences will be laid out so that you may be able to classify each of your experiences into one of them.
The first type of teamwork experience is the “fun” type. The fun type involves a group of individuals that all mesh just the right amount to get the task done. No one is doing too much work and no one is doing too little work. This sort of team dynamic is rare and tends to only appear once in a blue moon.
The second type of teamwork experience is the “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad type,” henceforth shortened to the “stressful” type. The stressful type is characterized by one person, usually yourself if you have labeled the experience thusly, being saddled with almost the entire project. This is the plague of overachievers and can occur in just about everything from a simple worksheet to a full-blown research poster. If you have ever been a part of a team project and finished it trying to figure out what you actually contributed to the finished product, you may have experienced this type, just from a different perspective, in which case you can refer to this type as the “easy A” type (and don’t feel bad for having this perspective, we’ve all been there). The frequency of this experience also tends to increase dramatically as the semester moves forward.
The third type of teamwork experience is the “competitive” type. The competitive type usually results from sticking too many overachievers that do not mesh well in a group together. Within this type of teamwork experience, there are two discrete subtypes. The first subtype is the “direct confrontation” type. The direct confrontation type often involves a fight for dominance between the overachievers within the group, until one comes out on top as the leader or some form of peace is reached, usually through division of major points of the project so that each leader type has something to manage independently. The second subtype is the “indirect confrontation” type. The indirect confrontation type is represented through the choice of a “leader.” “Leader” is in quotations because this person is allowed to think that they are the leader when, in fact, they are just acting as the figurehead of the team. Notably, another member of the team is the one that actually accomplishes the leadership role, whether this is through finalizing the task at hand or keeping the group on some form of schedule.
Throughout my education at UAB so far, I have experienced plenty of every type of teamwork experience, and for each experience I feel I have learned how to better accomplish teamwork.
Specifically, I have learned that communication is key. (1) If everyone is on the same page with what the team task is, it is much easier to accomplish. (2) If the team decides some form of schedule for the task(s) being completed, whether that is to be done with this part in 20 minutes or in 20 days, then things will sail much smoother and be much less stressful. And, lastly (3) Teamwork is an opportunity to make friends with people you may not have talked to under a different circumstance.
The most important lesson I have so far received from UAB is how to be team player.
While currently working on my bachelor’s degree in Health Care Management at UAB I had the opportunity to work on several team projects for my coursework, things like strategic management in healthcare organization, operation management in health care organization, clinical and administration information system, economics for healthcare managers, and health care policy and reform. One of the team projects in economics that was assigned by our professor was to develop a plan, based on what economic principles to use, to reduce obesity in the state of Alabama. For this project I was teamed up with three other students that were assigned by our professor and I was delegated to be the team leader for this project. I was initially nervous to take the role of a team leader as this project was 30% of the grade and would affect everyone’s grade; however, I was determined to take on this challenge and use this as a learning opportunity. My team was unique and diverse as one of the students on my team was an out-of-state online student, one was local, and the other one was an international student.
We had one month to complete this project and present our findings in class. As a team leader I decided to divide and conquer by delegating each team member with an assignment. Each team member was accountable for the assigned portion of the project and we met every week to get a status update on the progress of our project and plan for the next week. Initially everyone was very proactive and responsive, however within two weeks one of the team members was lagging as he had too many classes to cope with and was unable to make it to most of our meetings. This situation started to drag our project off schedule and we decided the fastest fix to this problem was to divide that individual’s work among ourselves given the time constraints. This situation had put additional burden on three of our team members, however we were determined to work as a team and put together an excellent project report on using economic principles to tackle obesity. At the end, when our project was graded, we were delighted to see our project score the highest grade for this class. One thing I liked about these team projects is that each team member got an opportunity to do a peer review of their team members based on their experience, and this review also went towards the final grade.
Being a team leader on this project gave a rare opportunity for me to put myself in the leadership role. Based on my personal experience I believe team projects are a very good opportunity to collaborate and exchange ideas. As a part of this team project I observed that during this endeavor, working in a team opened doors to new ideas which would have remained locked had I done this project myself. As a team leader it also helped me understand the strengths and weaknesses of each individual and thus made it easier to assign each team member with a task that they were comfortable handling.
Overall, my experience working on team projects has mostly been positive and has helped in developing leadership, planning and execution skills which I would have never developed through an exam. I also think that these team projects prepare you for unknown challenges and lay the foundations for preparing you to work in a real-world environment where you don’t get to choose your team members.
“Alright Scholars, I want all of you to branch off into groups of five. Do this quickly! We don’t have much time.” (My inner self) “Man, I hate working in groups. This is really going to suck. I’m gonna end up doing all of the work. No one is going to listen to me. I don’t look like everyone else, so no one is going to take me seriously.” Several Minutes Have Passed Oh! I actually have to get into a group.
My disdain with group learning began in kindergarten. At five years old, I still didn’t know to tie my shoes. My teacher placed us in a group of six to learn. There was this kid, Jimmy, who had a crush on me. He plopped himself right next to me. We were instructed to sit criss cross applesauce. I did as I was told. Jimmy did not. He stretched his hairy wolf legs over to touch mine. I scooted over and he followed me. I yelled at him to stop, and the group laughed. I continued to scoot until I had almost met a wall. My heart began to race and my hands started to shake. Death felt like it was near. It had approached me and I didn’t know what to do. “WHAT ON EARTH ARE YA’LL DOING?!”, screamed my kindergarten teacher. I couldn’t muster up a word the whole day. She sent me to the principal’s office, and my mom took me home. I later explained to her everything that had happened.
Fast forward through the years after my first panic attack: I have had many experiences and learned many lessons about myself. I have found that there is power in coming to terms with who you are, whether or not others view it positively. I am an African American girl who has depression and anxiety who doesn’t like learning in group settings. One would think that group learning experiences change in college because of the presumed “safe” spaces. That just isn’t true. The world infiltrates college campuses just like it permeates every other medium of life. I love UAB, it’s extremely progressive. We just live in the United States. The U.S. has a dilemma with miseducating, misinterpreting, and misinforming our public about mental disorders…and everything else.
Depression and anxiety make group learning incredibly difficult. Depression removes the desire to do/enjoy anything that one previously enjoyed. If depression had its way, my entire life would be enacted through the stage of my Serta mattress set. Anxiety is like the little bugs that dirty elephants swat away in the jungle. The bugs want to pick at the dirt on the elephant’s flesh, and he just wants to be left alone. Anxiety sneaks up behind its victims and whispers in their ears. It tells them that their opinions aren’t valid.
Medication improves my focus, but not my willingness to work in a group. I could be in a group with friends and still not have a willingness. I desire the independence to have control over my own success. If I fail, I want to say I gave it my all; not that I trusted someone else with my grade. I’ve been through a lot just to make it to this point in my educational career. I just want to do the best I can. So, I’ll be a lone wolf. But, I’m sure not lonely.
As a clinical laboratory science student, I have come to see that the largest roadblock facing my profession is visibility. The expected increase in careers due to the aging workforce coupled with a less well-known occupation places us at an increasingly crucial crossroads. One of the largest contributing factors to our lack of visibility is the misconception that laboratorians are the “behind-the-scenes” component of the healthcare team, or that we don’t want to work in a team. In fact, many patients believe lab testing is done by the doctors and nurses because they never see a laboratorian. As the workforce ages, so does this notion. Think about it…without the lab, even the brightest practitioners are only guessing. Practitioners send blood, tissue, and other body fluids to the lab to determine a cause and diagnosis. So how do we emphasize the important role that each of us plays? Standing on a street corner with a sign is probably not our best option.
Throughout my time at UAB, I have been encouraged to “get out of the lab”, meaning interact with patients, work and communicate with other healthcare providers, and solidify our importance in the diagnostic process. But how do we achieve this? UAB has the answer and is leading the way – interprofessional simulation! I put these ideals into practice through participation in numerous simulation activities where I worked in collaboration with UAB nursing, medicine, physical therapy, nuclear medicine technology, and physician assistant studies students. Talk about a truly interprofessional team! Interprofessional education in simulation goes well beyond sitting in a classroom or around a table. We learn about, from, and with each other in a simulated healthcare environment where it is safe for us to put our skills and work together for the benefit of the patient. It is through these simulations that those encouragements came to fruition. Not only was I able to contribute knowledge and information from a laboratory perspective to other healthcare fractions and break through the barriers of misconception, but I was able to conceptualize the importance of teamwork within and outside of the lab.
In simulation situations I was faced with performing laboratory testing in real time, the expected influx of questions and specimen reception from nursing, along with, at times incessant, phone calls from physicians requesting patient results. Within the lab, all of this would be overwhelming if there was a lack of teamwork. By appropriately delegating the workload amongst the laboratorians and effectively communicating we remained organized when the situation was stressful. UAB simulations allow me to practice this as a student! I can’t think of a better way to be prepared for working in a team environment than actually doing it!
Often, we would receive phone calls from physicians asking for advice or help interpreting results. It is vital that physicians view laboratorians as allies in patient care, and implementing this into an educational simulated environment serves as a step towards breaking the stigma of the lab. It encourages future physicians to use the lab as a resource. Following each simulation, a debriefing occurs wherein participants reflect on the content and events that occurred in simulation. In each debriefing I have been a part of, the predominant comments regard how their expectations of the lab were vastly different from the reality of what occurred. Additionally, more times than not, other members of the healthcare team stated they were more likely to contact the lab after participating in the simulation. What a huge breakthrough! We are able to encourage others to collaborate in the future by practicing in simulation.
Overall, simulation provided the ability to implement teamwork and visualize its importance. For me, its value is immeasurable and provided a platform to begin the incorporation of the clinical laboratory as a universal staple in the healthcare team. Ultimately, teamwork is the largest aspect effecting patient care and requires hand-in-hand collaboration much like was practiced in these simulated environments.