Teamwork Concept in Nursing Student's Point of View at Bushehr University of Medical Sciences

Teamwork is a collection of interconnected behaviors, knowledge and attitudes. Considering that some of the major activities of nursing students in the classroom and clinical learning activities are in the team, we decided to study the concept of teamwork from nursing students’ points of view. The present study was a qualitative content analysis; due to the nature of data, data gathering was done by group discussion and criterion-based sampling. The participants were consisted of two groups of first-year and two groups of final–year nursing students, with a total of 32 students of nursing student at Bushehr University of Medical Sciences in 2011. After coding and categorizing data from interviews, the concept of teamwork from students’ opinion was summarized in four main categories: requirements for teamwork, existence of team leader, team formation and its stability, and benefits and barriers to teamwork. The freshmen seemed well aware of the characteristics of teamwork and raised them from different angles. But, due to less experience in team work, they further referred to do and donts. While the fourth-year undergraduate students having more experience in the field of student affairs and establishing team and having a highly interactive relationship with each other, therefore, they maintained their strength and efficiency of teamwork together for others in addition to the outlined requirements; they also have noted the importance of this aspect for teachers and educational planners shines.