I consider us to have been a loosely knit team of all four individuals. However, we did not perform the tasks that a good team should have done to accomplish our goal of best possible care of our clients. This is what I think we should have done to improve our performance:

Set more goals, as outlined in "The Importance of Goals to the Success of Work Teams" by Greg Hendrix. We simply played it day-by-day when it came to taking care of our clients. We did take trips to Hawaii, San Francisco and Canada which were well planned and executed, but when it came to personal care we just took care of things as they came along. This may have shortened the lives of our clients in the long run. John Tyler was seriously overweight, and we never clearly set a goal of having him lose weight, such as write up a plan or get together as a team to discuss his needs. Ron Schwarz was taking far too many medications for his health, and one in particular seemed to be destroying his central nervous system. Virginia and I should have met with his doctors to discuss this problem and worked out a way to lower his amount of medications taken. We should have set goals for the betterment of his long-term overall health. "The goal of the group creates a vision that focuses their efforts."--Hendrix. The four of us never had a clear vision of what our general purposes were.

Motivated our team,

In summary, there were a lot of things the four of us could have done to improve our working situations, but the two most important ones were to set healthy, realistic goals, and to clearly motivate our paired and interactive teams.
About the Author

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole-Peralta writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com/ is a world renowned freelance writing, copyediting, ghostwriting, graphics and CAD, search engine optimization, publishing helpers, internet marketing, free professional services, and supercheap dedicated web host and website development corporation.