We Design Prevention for Patients. Why Not for Team Performance?

In healthcare, we vaccinate to prevent disease, manage blood pressure to prevent stroke, and intervene early to avoid complications. We do not wait for harm and then decide what to do. When it comes to interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP) and how our teams function across departments, however, we do exactly that.

The same prevention thinking we apply to patient care should apply to how we design the teams delivering it.

The pattern most healthcare teams are caught in

You are leading a department that performs well, but much of your work depends on what happens outside your control. A missed step in the patient journey, a breakdown in communication, or a delay in handoff can quickly shift your team into response mode. Suddenly, your focus is no longer on the work you planned, but on solving a problem that could have been prevented.

Teams respond. They meet, address what is in front of them, and move forward. The next issue appears, and the cycle repeats. This pattern feels familiar because it reflects how most organizations operate across departments. This is not a failure of effort. It is a failure of prevention.

In clinical care, we think in levels. We consider how to prevent the issue before it occurs, how to identify it early, and how to intervene when needed. In IPCP and cross-department collaboration, we often skip those first steps. We wait for conflict, misalignment, or delays in care before we act. By the time a response is initiated, the impact has already reached the patient, the team, or both.

What we accept in teams that we would never accept in clinical care

Imagine if we approached stroke care the way we approach team design. We wait until the event happens. Then we gather the team and ask them to determine next steps. There is no protocol, no defined roles, no shared understanding of timing or responsibility.

We would never accept that in clinical care.

According to the World Health Organization, approximately 1 in every 10 patients is harmed in health care, and more than 3 million deaths occur annually due to unsafe care. Joint Commission's 2024 Annual Review on Sentinel Events reported 1,575 sentinel events for the year, an increase of approximately 13 percent over 2023, with the leading categories together accounting for 85 percent of all reported events and most linked to communication breakdowns and protocol lapses. Those breakdowns do not happen because people do not care. They happen because the conditions that prevent them were never designed into the work.

We accept this in team-based work every day.

Prevention requires design, not just intention

Prevention in teamwork is not about telling people to communicate more or attempting to define roles in the middle of the work. It is about building the conditions that make breakdown less likely from the start. This includes how teams are structured across departments, how workflows connect across the patient journey, how accountability is shared, and how expectations are defined before the work begins.

Prevention without infrastructure is just hope, and hope is not an operating model.

Most leaders were never formally trained in the science behind how teams function across departments, yet they are expected to lead it. As a result, they rely on experience and general guidance, which is valuable, but not designed to support the level of coordination required across a system. This is where IPCP must move from concept to structure and cross-department collaboration must move from expectation to design.

When that shift occurs, collaboration becomes something teams can rely on, not something they have to recreate each time an issue arises. This is the difference between reacting to problems and preventing them.

Designing for prevention rather than managing its absence

Healthcare does not struggle with knowing how to prevent harm. We struggle with applying that same thinking to how we prepare and support our teams. Preventing breakdown in care starts long before the patient is impacted. It starts with how the work is designed.

If most of your leadership time is spent responding to issues across departments, you are not leading prevention. You are managing the consequences of its absence.

You already know how to lead your department well. What you may not have been shown is how to structure collaboration across professions and departments in a way that prevents breakdown before it starts. This is not about doing more. It is about designing differently.

Where to start

The 6 Conversations That Prepare Teams for System-Level Work is the clearest starting point for leaders who are ready to move from reacting to issues to preventing them. It walks through the conversations most teams were never guided to have but need to have before IPCP and cross-department work can succeed.

Download the 6 Conversations guide here.

For the foundational posts in this series on what IPCP is and how it is designed, start here.

What is Interprofessional Collaborative Practice?

We Use Evidence-Based Practice for Patients. Why Not for Teams?

Reach out if you are ready to structure collaboration more intentionally.

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