Multidisciplinary Team Healthcare

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The practice of using inter-professional teams in delivering care is not a new concept but current health policy requires professionals work within a multidisciplinary team Department of Health (2001) and entrenched in the Nursing and Midwifery Council (2008) Code. The principle focus of this essay is to discuss the importance of inter-professional collaboration in delivering effective health care and what challenges and constraints exist. The integration of a case study will give an insight into inter-professional collaboration in practice.

The demand of a constantly developing health service has required each professional to become highly specialised within their own field. Despite the focus for all professionals being on the delivery high quality care (Darzi, 2008); no one profession is able to deliver a complete, tailored package. This illustrates the importance of using inter-professional collaboration in delivering health care. Patient centric care is further highlighted in policies, emphasising the concept that treating the illness alone whilst ignoring sociological and psychological requirements on an individual is no longer acceptable. Kenny (2002) states that at the core of healthcare is an agreement amongst all the health professionals enabling them to evolve as the patient health requirements become more challenging but there are hurdles for these coalitions to be effective: for example the variation in culture of health divisions and hierarchy of roles. Here Hall (2005) illustrates this point by stating that physicians ignore the mundane problems of patients, and if they feel undervalued they do not fully participate with a multidisciplinary team.

It is also important to recognise group dynamics and leadership. If a...

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...e were the renal pharmacist and the autonomic peritoneal dialysis educator and trainer.

The effective collaboration between the members of the renal health care team resulted in successfully reducing John’s hypertension, hyperkalaemia and overloading in the short term.

After further multidisciplinary team meetings with the involvement of John the treatment option of automated peritoneal dialysis was implemented (NSF 2004). Once the Tenchkoff catheter had been inserted, education and training completed John was ready for discharge home.

Through collaborative, multidisciplinary teamwork a significant contributed to John being able to recover quicker, keep his independence and maintain a high quality of life. There was constant communication between John and the MDT ensuring patient centred care which empowered John to take control of his long term treatment plan.

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