What is a Multidisciplinary Approach?
A multidisciplinary approach refers to provide different professional services under one roof for a single patient. When the experts from different professional fields joint hand to provide services to the patients. A patient suffering from a disease is does not only require the medical treatment but also needs the services from social, psychological, nursing and other different professional teams to be take care of. A person suffered mental stress with the physical illness. They need a nurse, social worker, psychiatric and other professional services to improve their health from every aspect. Working together in a multidisciplinary approach by experts from different profession of healthcare, management, psychology, social etc. collaborate to provide care and expert services to the patient. They treat the patient in their different ways that results to bringing back the patient from illness (Bathula, 2019). These services under one roof becomes easy to obtain by the patient and he/she does not need to run to different service centre for his/her treatment (Frimpong, et al., 2017).
Peter Smith has the medical problems like diabetes; CHF, hypertension and he recently went through a hip replacement treatment. He needs a team-based treatment from the professional from different fields. Following healthcare professionals are required to provide their expert services and care to Smith:
- cardiologists,
- nurses,
- dietician,
- social worker,
- community health worker,
- pharmacist,
- Physicians (Soriano, 2013)
Mr Smith needs a cardiologist to regularly check and care the hypertension problems as it could increase due to his slow recovery of hip replacement. A routine check-up is required for him from a cardiologist to regulate his hypertension.
Every medical condition needs a dietician to take care of the patient’s healthy diet. A dietician shall help Mr Smith to have a controlled and healthy field that is required for his recovery. Dietician suggests eating the food with specific quantity that is essential to take in a particular medical condition. Mr Smith has diabetes and having more requirement of a dietician (Soriano, 2013).
Because of his hip replacement surgery, he cannot do his own daily routine properly and needs support to survive. He needs nurses and social worker for the same. Nurses shall also take care of the medication and social worker could support his emotional condition of not being with his wife. Social workers provide good services to support the patient mentally as most of the patients felt comfortable to share their feelings to a social worker.
The children of Mr Smith are not living with him and a patient needs an assistance and support all the time. Community health worker could provide these supportive services to him for 24*7. The services provided by them shall increase his moral to get well soon. A nurse could provide all the clinical related services as soon as it needed by Mr Smith could.
Professional Services Required for Peter Smith’s Treatment
Physicians, pharmacist, and specialized nurses provide the primary care needed by a patient. They manage the primary care needed by a patient and give him proper assistance to take medicines on time.
In the case of Mr Smith, multidisciplinary approach has needed because he is an old age man with diabetes, hypertension, CHF and other suffering from slow recovery from his surgery. He needs a 24*7 assistance from different experts as any delay may cause a huge loss or suffering to him. The diabetes, hypertension, and CHF problems were under control at the time of surgery but needs a proper care from the experts as it may increase due to his treatment. Mr Smith is also concerned about his old wife with whom he should be there but not able to do. Hence, he is somehow, is facing emotional conflicts of thoughts and to stabilize him, a social worker and community healthcare workers are required.
For a quality care, nowadays the multidisciplinary services are available. Whereas, it is not easy to work together after being from different profession. They all have their own way to perform their duties. Hence, the collaboration with mutual consent is an essential part of a multidisciplinary approach. Teamwork is important to execute a task together without creating misunderstanding (West, 2012).
Healthcare professionals need some attributes and skills to perform the multidisciplinary task together. Skills like, communication skill, conflict management skills, decision-making skills, listening and performance management skills are required for an effective teamwork. The professionals needs to work together, hence should communicate with each other, and manage the work as per the condition of the patient. Every professional has its own way to work but in teamwork, they need to coordinate with each other and try to avoid the chances of misunderstanding. The professionals should have supportive attribute towards the work and assist the other professionals to work accordingly. Every professional is an expert in their field, hence if required; they should not feel ashamed to ask anything from others (Mitchell, et al., 2012).
In multidisciplinary approach the professionals work together, hence, needs to resolve their conflict of interest and focus on their responsibilities to provide sufficient care to the patient. Proper management of tasks should also an essential element to work together. It reduces the chances of any confusion for the professionals. Task allocation results smooth working conditions and reduces the conflict ratio in the team ( Babiker, et al., 2014).
Attributes and Skills Required for Multidisciplinary Teamwork
The work of multidisciplinary team is more accurate and professional that improvise the patient’s condition in less time. The reason behind this is, many experts sum-up their expertise and apply. Mr Smith needs the multidisciplinary approach as he needs a speedy recovery after his hip replacement surgery. It is also more effective and economical for the patient. The patient get quality services from the experts in different disciplines. This made the treatment more professional in nature. Taking the different services from different sources increases the efforts from the patient. Multidisciplinary practice removes the referral process and removes extra efforts from patient.
Decision making in the multidisciplinary approach become difficult for number of professionals working for same task as they all experts from their disciplines. This makes the chances of miscommunication and imbalance in teamwork. The decision-making process become lengthy and take more time than sole decision. There are chances to raise conflict between the professionals in allocating the tasks. These barriers may delay the treatment process that could affect patient’s medical condition. The collaboration needs more efforts from the experts to coordinate. Many a times, decision left incomplete due to the miscommunication or misunderstanding between the professionals.
Mr Peter Smith was suffering from mental as well as physical pain after his hip replacement surgery. He needed the services from different professionals and I was serving as nurse in the multidisciplinary team. As a member of the team, I gained a lot of knowledge about different professions included in the team. I was supposed to support Mr Smith in his medical treatment. I have learnt the soft communication skill and patience from the social worker professional working with us. Mr Smith needs timely primary medical assistance in which the physician and pharmacist were helping me. He raised my medical knowledge about medicines and primary care. Working with different professionals lead my management skills. It improved the team coordination and I realized my management skills. Whenever I did not understand any process or concept regarding other discipline, other professionals helped me to understand the same. This upgraded my knowledge and build-up confidence in me. Working with multidisciplinary team, I gained a lot knowledge, communication skills, and management skills in me that shall help me in the future. I would provide better services to the patient and could assist professionals from different fields. Vast knowledge development could help me in my career growth. It became easier for me to deal with the patients as now I know that how to support the patients emotionally. I could also add this experience of working with multidisciplinary team in my resume and could also apply for different courses in healthcare. I could also gain the opportunities to work in highly paid hospitals due to my knowledge and experience in different disciplines of healthcare.
Benefits of Multidisciplinary Approach in Healthcare
Professionalism is the values and behaviours followed by a professional. It is a set of rules and principles that guide a professional to behave and perform his duties. For example, for a doctor, professionalism is how he represents himself and tackles different challenges of his profession (hcpc-uk.org, 2012). In short, professionalism is all about following ethical and general code of conduct of the profession. Maintaining professionalism includes the following:
- Being accountable for the responsibilities and solve the problems comes between the profession.
- Prioritize the patients and being impartial while performing the professional duties. Making the patient his priority is the key of maintaining professionalism
- Being honest and follow ethical values in the profession. Maintaining professionalism involves staff coordination and building trust among them.
- Critically think and evaluate the condition of the patient. Regularly interact with the patients and analyze the situations regularly(NMC, 2019).
- Uphold the dignity of people: The nurses need to treat people with care and respect. Try to figure out the choices of individuals. Uphold the human rights of the individuals.
- Assessment of social, psychological, and physical needs of individuals: Nurses need to pay attention to people’s needs and try to asses them in their way. To achieve that, they need to recognize their needs and try to accomplish them with compassion.
- Privacy and confidentiality: The nurses have to respect the privacy and confidentiality of the people and must not disclose any information related to them in front of others.
- Practice with best available evidence: The nurses have to give information to anyone should have evidence of that. The information should not be vague. The knowledge and skills have to be updated for effective work.
- Clear and accurate records: Nurses have to complete the records on time and maintain its’ accuracy double-check it. The documentation must be done in clear words and must be accurate(nmc.org.uk, 2018).
- Regularly maintain and develop the performance. The professional knowledge and skills has to be updated with time. A doctor must know the recent guidelines and principles related to their work.
- Keep the patient’s safety on priority: A doctor has to work for the safety of his patient. The patient has to be the first priority of a doctor and support the patient to get their physical, social, and medical needs.
- Apply skills and knowledge to practice: A doctor while prescribing any medicine must have the appropriate knowledge of the prescription. Also a doctor should consult their colleagues with the help of their updated skills and knowledge.
- Building trust: A doctor has to build trust between the patient and his staff. A doctor could built trust by treating people without discrimination.
- Communication: A doctor should has regular communication between the patients and colleagues. The communication must be two-way as he has to listen his patients and colleagues and should have skill to resolve their problems(gmc-uk.org, 2013).
British Orthopaedic Association has the surgical speciality in Trauma and orthopaedics. They have policy to provide speciality skills and knowledge to treat the patients. As per this policy, they provide the better quality of treatment to the patients of Orthopaedics and Trauma (boa.ac.uk, 2014). Better quality refers to provide all the services that a patient needs in and after his surgery. Hence, it shall apply the multidisciplinary teamwork to provide the quality work to the patients.
The policy to provide best services shall implement with the help of multidisciplinary team working. A patient suffering from orthopaedic or trauma needs different services from different experts. For example, a patient has hospitalized for hip replacement surgery shall need the physical, medical, and mental assistance. These requirements of patients need the services related to nursing, physician, and other services from different disciplines. The physicians and nurses shall assist the patient to provide the primary medical services include; assisting the patient to walk or give the medicines on time. The role of a social worker or common health worker shall provide the emotional support to the patient as mental health is also very important for recovery of a patient. BOA has to provide these multidisciplinary services to provide best quality of work in their organization and to support the patient 24*7 physically as well as mentally.
BOA includes doctors, nurses, pharmacist, physicians, social workers, and other professionals to provide the multidisciplinary teamwork to the patients. The policy of giving specialised services shall affect the efficiency of the professionals, as BOA shall demand for best quality work from the professionals working on patients. Patient satisfaction is the prime aim for the multidisciplinary team and it has to give quality work with full satisfaction of patients.
Babiker, A. et al., 2014. Health care professional development: Working as a team to improve patient care. Sudanese Journal of Paediatrics, 14(2), pp. 9-16.
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