Rita Berger

Burnout in Healthcare Professionals in Oncology

Abstract Healthcare professionals working with cancer patients have considerable risk for burnout. Nevertheless we know not enough about the burnout prevalence in oncological healthcare in Spain. This study aimed at estimating burnout levels of oncologyprofessionals and at assessing satisfaction and work difficulties. 115 professionals answered the Maslach Burnout Inventory, a satisfaction questionnaire, and questions about difficulties and improvements. Results revealed a considerable number of professionals with burnout showing physicians a higher level than nurses. Burnout was negatively related to aspects of work satisfaction. Difficulties were work overload, communication and emotional aspects with patients and colleagues. Improvementsdealt with organizational andindividual aspects. Results are useful for prevention and intervention programs. Future research should analyze the work situation and personal factors.

Relationship of health workers with their organization and work: a cross-cultural study

ABSTRACT We analyzed the differences, by Student’s t-test and ANOVA, between nurses and physicians from Portugal, Poland, Spain, and United Kingdom regarding their relationship with their work and organization. In total, 1,401 professionals answered the HSA-QHPR questionnaire. There are different levels of connection between physicians and nurses. The United Kingdom has the lowest levels of connection with the work while Portugal has the highest levels of relationship with the organization. The results provide guidelines for the development of policies and differential strategies aimed at improving the quality of healthcare service.

Teamwork: Assessment of teamwork competence in higher education

Teamwork is a competence highly demanded among workers and an academic field with an extensive specialized literature. Based on this knowledge that comes from the study of organizational behavior, this communication presents a model to understand teamwork in higher education settings. The theoretical model considers structural components (i.e., task interdependence and task uncertainty), processes (i.e., team development and team climate for learning) and results (i.e., team effectiveness). Moreover, an assessment tool (and attitude questionnaire with 42 items-Likert scale with a range from 1 to 7) is also presented to measure these critical components that can allow us to distinguish between effective and ineffective teams in higher education. First results of the application of these tools to 18 team students show good consistency values of the tools being able to distinguish among teams. Additionally, we propose a procedure to obtain aggregated measures per group from the members’ responses considering the degree of agreement among members.

How Knowledge Worker Teams Deal Effectively with Task Uncertainty: The Impact of Transformational Leadership and Group Development

The purpose of this paper is to clarify how leadership is able to improve team effectiveness, by means of its influence on group processes (i.e., increasing group development) and on the group task (i.e., decreasing task uncertainty). Four hundred and eight members of 107 teams in a German research and development (R&D) organization completed a web-based survey; they provided measures of transformational leadership, group development, 2 aspects of task uncertainty, task interdependence, and team effectiveness. In 54 of these teams, the leaders answered a web-based survey on team effectiveness. We tested the model with the data from team members, using structural equations modeling. Group development and a task uncertainty measurement that refers to unstable demands from outside the team partially mediate the effect of transformational leadership on team effectiveness in R&D organizations (p < 0.05). Although transformational leaders reduce unclarity of goals (p < 0.05), this seems not to contribute to team effectiveness. The data provided by the leaders was used to assess common source bias, which did not affect the interpretability of the results. Limitations include cross-sectional data and a lower than expected variance of task uncertainty across different job types. This paper contributes to understanding how knowledge worker teams deal effectively with task uncertainty and confirms the importance of group development in this context. This is the first study to examine the effects of transformational leadership and team processes on team effectiveness considering the task characteristics uncertainty and interdependence.