‘Let's work together to pass medical school’: a qualitative study of medical student attitudes to teamwork, competition and collaboration

Teamwork is vital to all types of work, and graduates of higher education
programmes must be prepared to contribute to a wide variety of professional
teams. This is especially true in healthcare, where graduates will
work in multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) under considerable pressure. This
study is a follow-up to a previous study, where we described how competition
between students is a barrier to constructive teamwork. Since then, we
have made considerable enhancements to our transferable skills curriculum,
moved away from norm referencing, and there have been national changes
to the way that graduate Foundation training places are allocated. Here we
present findings from a qualitative study of students from all six stages of
our medical degree programme (5 years plus predegree foundation year).
We explored whether there had been changes in how students perceived
the importance of teamwork, their own teamwork development and how
they collaborated with their peers. Following analysis of in-depth,
semi-structured interviews, five themes emerged: (a) competition between
students; (b) importance of teamwork; (c) what makes effective teamwork;
(d) preparing for work in MDTs; and (e) recommendations for teamwork
education. Competition between students was perceived as both positive
and negative, but there has been a shift since our last study towards collaboration,
with students now more willing to help each other succeed. Students
also show more insight into their teamwork development, and were
able to discuss what aspects of the programme, and higher education more
broadly, were most valuable in helping them develop.