Team tension as a vital sign

Current efforts to provide comprehensive health care have accentuated the need for new models that integrate the biological, psychological, and social fields. One approach to meeting this need has been the development of health care teams. However, the multidisciplinary perspectives of such teams often result in tension and discord. While this tension may be partly attributable to institutional or professional biases or lack of adequate decision-making techniques, it may also be an essential diagnostic tool for exploring and integrating the paradoxes of the patient's homeostatic system. This approach captures and bridges some of the inadequacies of our prevailing knowledge base. The team's tension can be experienced as an essential empathic connectedness to the patient's life situation. Resolution of the team's internalized conflict becomes a paradigm for the patient's reintegration of his or her own paradoxical or contradictory needs.