Power and conflict and the performance of medical action teams: a commentary.

In this issue of Medical Education, Janss et al. address the need for medical team training and suggest that knowledge available from both social and organisational psychology might be used to guide the development of a training intervention. The differences in the interpersonal dynamics of ad hoc medical action teams are well described in this article, as are specific needs for the management of conflict and other issues that arise as a result of power struggles within these types of team. The authors propose that using available theories from social and organisational psychology will allow the medical community to develop tools and methods with which to train ad hoc medical action teams in a manner that will improve team performance.