ABSTRACT
The process of teaming offers an expanded resource for diagnosis and problem solving. The interactions of team members will reflect both system and patient care problems. But those interactions also tend to pull the team apart. In order to survive, the team needs to understand the ways in which its conflicts reflect unresolved contradictions and paradoxes in society, in the patient, and in the health care system. Institutional support for health care teams will depend on the extent to which those in power come to rely on a collaborative process to fulfill their own objectives.
