As any oncology healthcare provider will tell you, excellent patient care requires a highly functional team dedicated to manage the complexities of each patient’s treatment plan as well as guiding the patient through a complex medical system that is often intimidating to patients and their families. Despite the critical importance of building effective teams for patient care, this is not a concept that is made immediately known not only to nurses, but many other healthcare related disciplines in general. Though many academic programs may offer courses or seminars on team building concepts, acquiring knowledge and practice of forming an effective team for patient care is usually acquired with career experience, typically from participating on both a high performing team, as well as a more dysfunctional one.

I was lucky enough to be asked to join JTOP as a nursing mentor in 2008, and I attended my first JTOP meeting in Sapporo that November. During this time, I had the great fortune of mentoring a passionate group of physicians, pharmacists, and nurses who not only came to learn about multidisciplinary care and team building, but were able to create and present a comprehensive oncologic program over the course of a weekend. My career was forever changed since that time, as I have been part of many effective teams in research with nursing and rehabilitation, worked with other healthcare providers in our department in developing standards of care for our workflow, creating educational materials for our patients, and most recently helping to train our department in learning our new comprehensive electronic medical record, while continuing my role in patient care within a multidiscipline team. Learning and practicing these concepts in team building was a major contributing factor in my successes in my nursing career.

With each JTOP workshop, we continue to face new challenges, from changes in healthcare, pressures affecting our careers, and in planning this international conference. I continued to have a renewed sense of inspiration and confidence from working with the incredible team of mentors and tutors in JTOP; each of whom help to maintain, grow and evolve this program. I know in speaking with each year’s participants from Japan and across Asia, that we all have many similarities in the problems we face in caring for our patients, as we continue to pursue our career goals and keep a balance in our work and personal life. The skills and knowledge from the team building exercises in this program have had a positive effect on all of the members of JTOP, and our hope is continue to build relationships within this program in order to continue to improve oncology care.