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ABSTRACT
Interdisciplinary collaboration is critical to excellence in patient care delivery. There is a growing consensus that the basic education for all clinical professionals should include the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to effectively participate in interdisciplinary teams, and that health care organizations should continue this education in the practice setting. The authors examine the large and growing evidence base regarding interdisciplinary collaboration and teamwork and explore the relationship between interdisciplinary collaboration and patient, workforce, and organizational outcomes. Antecedents and attributes of the construct are presented, as well as structures, models, and programs that are being implemented by health care organizations and academic settings to facilitate and advance interdisciplinary collaboration in clinical practice.
Over the past decade, nursing and other clinical professions have embraced the principles of interdisciplinary collaboration. Within health care organizations, interdisciplinary collaboration is critical to patient care as well as strategic planning and quality and safety initiatives. Within both service and academe, there is a growing consensus that the basic education for all clinical professionals should include the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to effectively participate in interdisciplinary teams, and that health care organizations should continue this education in the practice setting. And within the research community, there is a growing focus on advancing interdisciplinary research with the understanding that this approach yields stronger idea generation, methods, and study outcomes (Woods & Magyary 2010).
Interdisciplinary collaboration is also a central feature of many programs and initiatives advanced by professional associations. The American Nurses Credentialing Centers (ANCC) Magnet Recognition Program; the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award; the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses Beacon Award; the American Organization of Nurse Executives Principles of a Healthful Practice Environment; the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) TeamSTEPPS Program; and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement/ Robert Wood Johnson Transforming Care at the Bedside initiative are just some of the programs promoting standards and frameworks that advance practice and organizational cultures steeped in inclusion, shared decision making, equity, and teamwork.
Underlying this push for greater interdisciplinary collaboration is the premise that safety, quality, and efficiency in patient care delivery is bolstered by structures and processes that equalize the status of clinicians on the care team, and that promote interdisciplinary collaboration and teamwork while reducing or eliminating...