Expertise Redundancy, Transactive Memory, and Team Performance in Interdisciplinary Care Teams

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Management
• Team Dynamics
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• Interdisciplinary care teams (ICTs) are crucial for complex patient needs.
• Understanding team dynamics like expertise redundancy and transactive memory (TM) is vital for optimizing ICT performance.
• Existing research has not fully explored the interplay between expertise redundancy, TM, and ICT performance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between expertise redundancy, TM accuracy, TM consensus, and team performance in ICTs.
• To determine if TM can mitigate the negative effects of expertise redundancy on team performance.

Main Methods:

• Longitudinal, observational study of 26 interdisciplinary mental health teams.
• Measured expertise redundancy, TM accuracy, and TM consensus at baseline, 6, and 12 months.
• Assessed team performance by risk-adjusted average client hospitalizations.

Main Results:

• Expertise redundancy was associated with decreased team performance.
• TM accuracy positively influenced team performance, with a stronger effect at higher levels of expertise redundancy.
• TM consensus did not show a significant effect on team performance.

Conclusions:

• TM acts as a cognitive coordination mechanism that can buffer the negative impact of complex knowledge structures in ICTs.
• Enhancing TM accuracy is a potential strategy to improve ICT performance, particularly in teams with significant knowledge overlap.