ABSTRACT
Many doctors (particularly surgeons) continue to find horizontally structured inter-professional team communication a challenge, despite the fact that collaborative teams have been shown to have better patient outcomes, develop a better safety climate and promote work satisfaction. And conditions change, so that collaborative capabilities needed for today’s workplace are not the same as those needed “yesterday”. Humans are existentially vulnerable and prone to fall short of potential unless they collaborate, and learn how to use artefacts, languages and symbols in ways that open up new horizons of possibility. Process may be more open-ended and call for collaborative structures, and may be reflexive – inquiring into the nature and process of the communication itself. In facilitating communications, Heron encourages striving for democratic encounters. Heron now said that an effective facilitator for group settings should be able to balance “purposes” and “intentions”.
