Interdisciplinary team development and job satisfaction of team members working with the mentally retarded

The interdisciplinary team is used in many health care settings and is the accepted model for service delivery throughout the field of mental retardation. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between the level of interdisciplinary team development and the level of job satisfaction of members of the interdisciplinary teams. Subjects (N = 154) were members of 25 interdisciplinary teams at a large state-owned Intermediate Care Facility for the Mentally Retarded (ICF/MR) in the southeastern United States.; Pearson correlations revealed that the level of overall job satisfaction was directly related to the level of interdisciplinary team development (r =.2619; p =.001). T-tests revealed there was no difference in over-all job satisfaction of nurses and the job satisfaction of other team members (t =.63, p =.530). Correlations did not support the hypothesis that interdisciplinary teams will demonstrate a low level of team development when the level of turnover of team members is high.