Enhancing ad hoc team performance with emotional intelligence

Ad hoc teams in healthcare systems are beneficial from an organizational lens. Despite the benefits of ad hoc teams, clinical faculty have reported concerns due to a short time to coalesce prior to taking care of complex patients in areas such as the intensive care unit, trauma bay, or operating room. Evidence around ad hoc teams is scarce, so we extrapolated key findings from adjacent literature to establish a foundation for ad hoc team members' individual readiness. We propose that it is critical for team members to be individually prepared, and we borrow from literature focused on building emotionally intelligent (EI) teams. Thus, all team members should develop their EI to ensure that they will demonstrate self-awareness, empathy, transparency, adaptability, and collaboration. If each team member shows up with a high level of EI, the team should be able to read the situation, anticipate the needs of other team members, and adapt as needed, ensuring a positive outcome for the patient and team.