Interdisciplinary Team Training Concepts
A team is a group of individuals working together toward a common goal.
A group is a number of people or things gathered together in a recognizable
unit. A team can be a group, but a group is not necessarily a team.
"A team is capable of achieving results with patients that the individuals who
constitute the team cannot achieve in isolation."
Specialization of health care services has been developed out of necessity to
integrate the rapidly expanding advances in health care. Out of necessity
clinicians have had to focus their knowledge of developments in their specialty
area. Optimal care for the patient entails the excellence within one's specialty
area along with realizing the need for integrating other specialty areas of
care.
Key features of interdisciplinary teams are communication and collaboration.
Providers of different professions should consider interdisciplinary care when
they share one or more common health goals for the patient. They are an
interdisciplinary team when they jointly define the patient’s complex problems, communicate and share responsibility in caring for the
patient. The interdisciplinary team process requires that members take into
account and build on the contribution of each of the others and become increasingly
efficient as a team.
Following is a brief description of different types of teams:
- A unidisciplinary group describes a group whose members belong to one discipline. An example of a
unidisciplinary team is a clinical teaching team involving an attending
physician, a medical resident, and a medical student.
- A multidisciplinary team implies that members represent a mix of different disciplines, although there
is one designated leader who makes decisions. Members do not implement care
plans as a group.
- An interactive unidisciplinary team describes a team whose members are from one discipline, but they may possibly
represent different specialty areas.
- The interdisciplinary team works together to develop a care plan, leadership changes as needed among the
different participants, and the participants are from more than one health
care discipline.
Methods of Teamwork in an Integrated System 
Many health care practices have a multidisciplinary team to which a primary
care provider refers a patient for consultation (i.e., psychologist or social
worker) for further assessment and independent interaction with the patient.
