Team adaptive capacity and adaptation in dynamic environments: A scoping review of the literature

Natalie Sanford*, Olivia Lounsbury, Gabriel Reedy, Dame Anne Marie Rafferty, Janet E. Anderson

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Healthcare systems rely on the expertise, ingenuity, and resilience of healthcare teams to maintain safe and high-quality care in complex, variable, and resource-constrained environments. Research has suggested that successful team adaptation prevents patient harm, optimises efficiency, and keeps healthcare systems running. Team adaptation is a central concept in both teamworking and organisational resilience theory, but team adaptation and its associated concepts, specifically team adaptive capacity, remain underspecified, ill-defined, and poorly understood in healthcare. Other high-risk industries, such as aviation, military, and nuclear power, may have a more extensive evidence base that can inform conceptualisations in healthcare and beyond. This scoping review synthesizes the cross-disciplinary literature on team adaptation, proposes a new definition for team adaptive capacity, and develops a model for understanding team adaptation, its outcomes, and antecedents: the team adaptive cycle.

Original languageEnglish
Article number100089
JournalHuman Factors in Healthcare
Volume6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2024

Keywords

  • Adaptive teamwork
  • Healthcare teamwork
  • Resilient healthcare
  • Team adaptation
  • Team adaptive capacity

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