Learnings From the Collaborative Practices of Elite Sports Doubles Players: A Scoping Review

When healthcare teams fail to communicate clearly and follow through on shared plans, patient outcomes and clinician well-being are compromised. Although substantial research has explored the factors that contribute to effective team performance, far less is known about what supports or hinders the performance of the foundational unit within teams: the dyad. The effectiveness of dyads, such as the emergency nurse/emergency physician or midwife/obstetrician pair, is a critical determinant of clinician well-being, patient safety, and quality of care. Drawing inspiration from the coordinated efforts of elite tennis doubles teams, this review examines the collaborative behaviors of high-performing sporting duos and considers how those insights may inform dyadic functioning in healthcare. What can the commitment to practice and the high-stakes mindset of athletic partnerships teach us about what is required of clinical dyads? Using the frameworks of distributed cognition and relational coordination, we analyze how these athletes effectively distribute cognitive workload across individuals and their environments to optimize performance. A scoping review was conducted using Maastricht University's LibSearch, which includes PsycINFO, MEDLINE, the Education Resources Information Center, and Web of Science. Searches were carried out between March 13, 2020, and July 4, 2021. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines for scoping reviews, 14 studies met the inclusion criteria. From this review, five key categories of collaborative practices used by elite sports doubles teams to enhance teamwork emerged. These include performance evaluation, frequent and structured practice, ongoing feedback from coaches, developing a unique team culture that promotes a shared mindset, and recruitment strategies that prioritize prior experience and preexisting familiarity between partners. Based on these findings, the authors propose that adopting similar strategies in healthcare, particularly cultivating a distinct team culture grounded in shared cognitive frameworks, and prioritizing dyadic familiarity during recruitment, could meaningfully improve both dyadic and broader team performance in clinical environments.