Interprofessional Team Building Within the Project “CCC-Integrativ”: A Field Report in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic

This chapter focuses on digital possibilities for knowledge transfer and exchange of knowledge related to interprofessional collaboration between medicine and nursing in Germany. In the project named “CCC-Integrativ” [CCC-Integrativ—Implementation of a cross-sectoral, interprofessional evidence-based counselling program on complementary and integrative health care (CIH) at the four comprehensive cancer centers (CCCs) in the federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany ( www.CCC-Integrativ.de )], interprofessional teams of physicians and nurses were formed to advise oncology patients on symptom management using complementary and integrative health care. Participating consultation teams (physician and nurse) were offered workshops based on the Toolkit to Enhance and Assist Maximizing Team Collaboration (TEAMc). TEAMc is a program of six workshops designed by Dr. Carole Orchard to assist teams in developing their own model for interprofessional client-centered collaborative practice (The program is available online through the University of Western Ontario’s World Discoveries). The outbreak of the coronavirus disease pandemic in Germany necessitated a redesign of the team-building program, which had been planned for face-to-face meetings. Even though the project is still ongoing, it became apparent that a purely online format for team-building workshops had weaknesses. A “hybrid” variant, in which team members met on site and the facilitator joined them online, on the other hand, seemed to offer a suitable way of achieving progress in team collaboration building even in times of a pandemic.