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 医疗保健领域日趋复杂，新的需求促使各方重新调整工作流程，致力于构建多专业团队，以向服务对象提供全面、高效且高质量的医疗服务。美国医学院校协会（Association of American Medical Colleges）建议，医学课程应探索相关策略，以培养具备协作发展、共同担当能力的高绩效团队，这类团队需具备领导力、决策力、沟通能力、冲突解决能力、自我认知能力、协作精神、共同责任意识与奉献精神。据此，《全国医学本科课程指南》（National Curriculum Guidelines for Medical Undergraduate Courses）明确要求，医学生需能够以互动、参与与对话为载体，展现领导力，秉持奉献精神、责任意识与同理心，具备决策、沟通及高效行动能力，最终以社区福祉为目标。用于组建团队并培养团队协作能力的一种策略是迈尔斯-布里格斯类型指标（Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, MBTI），该工具已在人力资源、管理与行政领域广泛应用于团队建设，其应用目的涵盖自我认知与自我提升、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》课程，在规划与实施该课程时引入了MBTI，以此作为学术周期内划分工作小组的策略。本文旨在汇报该实践经验，并基于问卷收集的学生反馈开展定量与定性分析。在完成MBTI测试后，研究人员根据学生的气质类型组建小组，将16种心理类型划分为四大气质类别：SJ（护卫者）、SP（技艺者）、NF（理想主义者）与NT（理性主义者），各小组的组建原则为每组至少涵盖每种气质类型的一名代表。定量分析结果显示，本次教学干预具有统计学意义。针对开放式问题的回答所开展的定性分析，首先通过信息编码完成分类，随后借助内容分析法将其归纳为大类。“团队组建效果良好”“借助MBTI实现自我认知与同伴认知”以及“对MBTI分组方式存疑”这三大类别，阐明了学生对于在医学培训中利用MBTI划分小组的潜力与挑战的认知。本次实践使我们认识到，整合个体技能不仅有助于产出高质量的最终成果，同时也能让工作过程得到认可，进而助力学生实现自我认知并提升人际交往能力。显而易见，作为学生、教师、医疗从业者与普通个体，我们应当充分利用教育过程的变革潜力，以此成为推动变革的行动主体。