Health Care Teams
Teams in the Dental Office
Unidisciplinary teams are made up of many providers from a single background,
such as a traditional dental office. All team members share the same professional
skills and training, speak a common language of healthcare, and function in
the same role within the group. Some group practices may be comprised of several
dental specialized and in this case we could call these multidisiciplinary dental
teams. While many of the concepts in this course apply to dental teams we will
also expand our discussion to focus on healthcare teams.
more about why we discuss these teams types, give examples of where dentists
may encounter these teams.
Multidisciplinary Teams
A multidisciplinary team is composed of members from more than one discipline
so that the team can offer a greater breadth of services to patients. Team members
work independently and interact formally. Multidisciplinary teams may be thought
of as requiring everyone to “do his or her own thing” with little or no awareness
of other disciplines’ work. Appropriate experts from different professions handle
different aspects of a patient’s case independently. Rather than integrated
care, the patient’s problems are subdivided and treated in parallel, with each
provider responsible only for his or her own area.
The team’s assessments and consultations are conducted separately, with little
communication among members. In fact, in a multidisciplinary team, each discipline
conducts its own assessment, generates its own treatment plan, implements the
plan, evaluates progress, and refines the plan based on its own evaluation.
Team members share information with each other, typically at meetings attended
by all team members. Although members may choose to use information obtained
in the meeting to revise their own goals or intervention strategies, there is
no attempt to generate or implement a common plan. Disadvantages of this model
concerns the lack of consultation between team members and the lack of an integrated
comprehensive treatment plan. The major disadvantage of this model is that it
addresses each individual impairment separately, tending to lose sight of how
these impairments affect the individual as a whole.
Interdisciplinary Teams
In an interdisciplinary team, a group of professionals works interdependently
in the same setting. Separate reassessments may still be conducted, but
information is shared and problems are solved in a systemic way with other
team members, typically during meetings. (Wieland)
The term interdisciplinary has received frequent use in the healthcare literature
for the past several decades, even though there is a disagreement among healthcare
professionals as to how that term is defined. Some use the term to refer to
situations in which more than one discipline is involved in either a patient’s
care, or a teaching situation, although the interaction between members of different
disciplines may be limited. Others use the term to describe situations where
various disciplines are involved in reaching a common goal, and each discipline
brings to the job his/her expertise. Still other healthcare professionals use
the term to refer to situations where healthcare disciplines specificity blurs,
and expertise overlap based on the requirements of the particular interaction.
The last scenario actually most appropriately describes an interdisciplinary
model, while the other situations are more examples of various levels of multidisciplinary
interactions.
An interdisciplinary team, then, may be understood to be a group of professionals
from several disciplines working
interdependently in the same setting, interacting both formally and informally.
Separate assessments may be conducted, but team members work to achieve a common
goal. Information is communicated and problems are solved in a systematic way
among team members, typically during team meetings.
Interdisciplinary cooperation requires integration or even modification of
the efforts of the contributing disciplines. The
team process demands that the participants take into account the contributions
of other team members in making their own contribution. This approach suggests
intersecting lines of communication and collaboration. One definition of the
interdisciplinary team that has been proposed captures all of these elements:
an interdisciplinary team is a “group of persons who are trained in the use
of different tools and concepts, among whom there is an organized division of
labor around a common problem with each member using his own tools, with continuous
intercommunication and re-examination of postulates in terms of limitations
provided by the work of the other members and often with group responsibilities
for the final product.”
There are other healthcare team models and you should familiarize yourself
with those listed in this table. Glossary
of Healthcare Team Models
Success of the team model is contingent upon knowledge of one’s own area as
well as other team members’ disciplines, flexibility of roles, and comfort and
skill in giving and receiving education from other disciplines. (Ducanis) To
promote effective collaboration, the team must address issues of group dynamics,
including role clarification, team unity, communication, and patterns of decision-making
and leadership.