What Is Interdisciplinary Collaboration?

Given the complexity of healthcare system today, effective and efficient collaboration and communication among team members is critical to ensure patient safety. Daniel & Rosentein (2008) reported that during a typical patient’s hospital stay, a patient may interact with 50 different employees that may include doctors, nurses, laboratory technicians, etc. They also reported that when healthcare professional are not communicating and collaborating effectively, patient safety is at risk for several reasons: break in communication flow, misinterpretation of information, incorrect telephone orders and overlooked orders.

In this paper my aim is to conduct a concept analysis of Interdisciplinary Collaboration in the context of healthcare with focus

The professional nurse should therefore be able to build communication and leadership skills to function effectively within the healthcare team, to foster open communication, demonstrate mutual respect and to engage in shared decision making to achieve quality patient-centered care (Boykins, 2014).

By the nature of the profession, nurses are the coordinator of patient care. This means are the referee and advocate within the team. Therefore, we must learn to effectively work and collaborate with other healthcare professionals. To be effective in our historical role, nurses must learn to communicate effectively and efficiently. Lack of communication and ineffective collaboration between nurses and other healthcare members creates situations where medical errors can occur-severe injury or unexpected death (Daniel & Rosentein ,

USES AND DEFINITIONS OF INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION

Historical Development

Interdisciplinary collaboration traced back to World War II in the United States when medical, surgical, and nursing teams worked together to treat wounded soldiers. But the development of the modern interdisciplinary teams in US is credited to Martin Cherkasky’s efforts at the Montefiore Hospital (Baldwin, 2007).

Definitions and Uses

The concept of 'interdisciplinary collaboration ' is widely referred to and used throughout literature in various disciplines. From the conduct of literature search using varying keys words with same meaning (i.e. “interdisciplinary collaboration” or “interprofessional collaboration” or “interdisciplinary” or “collaboration”) the following definitions and uses given