The MBTI in Medical Education: a Powerful Strategy to Develop Teamwork

ABSTRACT Health care has become increasingly complex and new needs demand that people readjust their work processes towards the construction of multi-professional teams that assure users comprehensive, effective, high quality care. The Association of American Medical Colleges has recommended that medical curricula seek strategies for collaborative development, shared responsibility, and high-performance teams characterized by leadership, decision-making, communication, conflict resolution, self-knowledge, cooperativity, co-responsibility, and commitment. Accordingly, the National Curriculum Guidelines for Medical Undergraduate Courses states that the student must be able to take leadership in interpersonal relationships with commitment, responsibility, empathy, ability to make decisions, communication and perform effective actions, mediated by interaction, participation and dialogue, aiming at the community’s well-being. One strategy to produce teams and develop teamwork skills is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), widely used in the human resources, management and administration sectors in team building, with the purpose of self-knowledge and self-development, organizational development, managerial training, and academic and professional curriculum development. Thus, the MBTI was incorporated into the planning and execution of a Public Health discipline, in the seventh semester of a Medicine course of a Brazilian Federal University, as a strategy for the division of working teams during the academic period. The objective of the present article, therefore, is to report the experience and to perform a quantitative and qualitative analysis based on student answers obtained in questionnaires. Following application of the MBTI test, teams were formed according to the students’ temperament, with the sixteen psychological types divided into four large groups of temperaments: SJ (guardians), SP (craftsmen), NF (idealists), NT (rational). The teams were created so that they each had at least one representative of each temperament. The quantitative analysis shows that the intervention was statistically significant. Qualitative analysis of the answers to the open-ended questions was obtained initially by categorization of the information, followed by grouping into broad categories, through content analysis. The categories “satisfactory team formation”, “opportunity for self-knowledge and peer knowledge by the MBTI”, and “disagreement with the MBTI division” elucidated the students’ perceptions about the potentialities and challenges of using the MBTI for team division in medical training. The experience taught us that adding individual skills is possible and important, not only for the construction of quality end products, but for the work process to be valued, allowing self-knowledge and the development of interpersonal skills. It is evident that we, as students and teachers, health professionals and people, should allow ourselves to be affected by the transformative potential of the educational process in order to enable us to act as agents that promote change.

【摘要】医疗保健领域日益复杂，新的需求要求人们重新调整工作流程，构建多专业团队，以保障服务对象获得全面、高效且高质量的照护。美国医学院协会（Association of American Medical Colleges）建议，医学课程应探索协作共进、责任共担的策略，打造具备领导力、决策力、沟通能力、冲突解决能力、自我认知能力、合作精神、共担责任意识与奉献精神的高效团队。据此，《医学本科课程国家课程指南》明确要求，学生需能够秉持奉献精神、责任担当与共情能力，具备决策、沟通能力，通过互动、参与与对话开展有效行动，致力于增进社区福祉。
培养团队协作技能的有效策略之一是迈尔斯-布里格斯类型指标（Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, MBTI），该工具在人力资源、管理与行政领域被广泛用于团队建设，应用场景涵盖自我认知与自我发展、组织发展、管理培训以及学术与专业课程开发。因此，巴西某联邦大学医学专业第七学期的公共卫生学科教学规划与实施环节中，引入MBTI作为该学期团队分组的策略。
本文旨在汇报该教学实践经验，并基于学生问卷反馈开展定量与定性分析。研究首先通过MBTI测试完成分组，依据学生的气质类型将16种心理类型划分为四大气质群组：SJ（守护者型）、SP（工匠型）、NF（理想主义者型）、NT（理性主义者型），且每组至少包含一种气质类型的代表。定量分析结果显示，本次教学干预具有统计学意义。定性分析则首先对开放式问题的反馈进行信息归类，随后通过内容分析法将其归纳为宽泛类别，最终形成“团队分组效果良好”“借助MBTI获得自我认知与同伴认知的契机”“对MBTI分组方式存在异议”三类学生感知维度，阐明了学生对于将MBTI应用于医学培训团队分组的潜在价值与面临挑战的看法。
本次实践表明，整合个体技能不仅可行且重要：这不仅有助于产出高质量的最终成果，更能让工作流程获得认可，同时助力学生实现自我认知与人际技能的发展。显而易见，作为学生、教师、医疗从业者与普通个体，我们应充分发掘教育过程的变革潜力，以此成为推动变革的行动者。