Original articleCollaborative and Interdisciplinary Health Care Teams: Ready or Not?
Section snippets
Historical Bureaucratic Fragmentation and Specialization of Health Care Services
Compartmentalization of health services emanates from medical specialization associated within traditional acute care systems (Cooper, Carlisle, Gibbs, & Watkins, 2001). Consequent service fragmentation is associated with authoritative and hierarchical structures (Bergman et al., 1997, McWilliam et al., 2001, Orchard et al., 2005), resulting in the prioritization of provider needs over client needs (Leatt et al., 2000, Lenkman & Gribbins, 1994, Shortell et al., 1996), unnecessary time
Consequences for the Health Care Consumer
Leatt et al. (2000) reported that consumers desire ready access to a preferred service provider and quality care. Lack of a coordinated team approach to access and referral may not only impede fulfilling these expectations but also increase isolation and marginality (Aronson & Neysmith, 2001) as well as service costs (Di Matteo & Di Matteo, 2001) for socioeconomically and disadvantaged people. For example, given the diversity of community-based health care teams (Gantert & McWilliam, 2004),
Strategies for Nursing Leadership
Although, overall, it does not seem pragmatic to implement health care teams at this point in time, a tremendous opportunity exists for the nursing profession to lead the change for successful development of collaborative and interdisciplinary practice. In essence, all nurses within practice, academic, and administrative contexts are required to work in collaborative and interdisciplinary environments. Their respective capacities, communication skills, and holistic practice perspectives provide
Nurse Faculty and Researchers
Nursing faculty must first be trained in collaborative methodology and then begin to collaborate with other faculty disciplines as well as participate in teaching collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches. As care becomes more interdisciplinary and collaborative in nature, the role of faculty must of necessity change (Larsen & Baumgart, 1992, Wylie & Wagen-Heintz, 2004) to support unique service delivery methodologies. Faculty will be required to participate within collaborative and
Administrative Leadership
The nurse manager must be able to skillfully navigate in many different interdisciplinary and intersectoral contexts, assess whether the values of collaborative and interdisciplinary teams are congruent with organizational goals, embrace transformation efforts to foster team-based service, and be flexible and creative in the management of interdisciplinary human and fiscal resources. During times of system resource realignment, the nurse manager must articulate the work values as well as
Conclusions
Although collaborative and interdisciplinary team practice has been promoted as a future imperative for the delivery of increasingly complex health and social care, the precise nature, methodology, and outcomes of team functioning are unknown. Prior to the implementation of this well-reasoned and widely applauded direction, systematic planning is required to address many potential implementation challenges and to develop effective strategies and policy for this change. The funding of
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to acknowledge the invaluable guidance and support provided during the development of this article by Dr. Carol McWilliam, Professor, School of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.
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