Communication Skills In Inter-Professional Practice

An important aspect of inter-professional practice is working with other professionals to achieve a positive outcome for their patients. To achieve this, emerging professionals such as dietitians need a clear understanding of their profession in terms of their roles, responsibilities and skills within their inter-professional practice team. Knowing and understanding the roles, responsibilities and skills of other health professionals dietitians may come in contact with such as speech pathologists and occupational therapists can establish a dietitians understanding of how to function in an interdisciplinary team and can also contribute to a positive patient outcome. An understanding of how health professionals function in inter-professional practice can allow for future professionals such as dietitians to attain a positive outcome for their future clients.
According to the Dietitians Association of Australia (DAA) and the Australian Standard Classification of Occupations a dietitian is responsible for health promotion, education and helping alter the nutritional quality of individuals and communities diets in respect to their culture to prevent or treat illnesses or maintain their clients’ health (Dietitians Association of Australia, n.d.; Brown, Carpa & Williams, 2006). Individuals, …show more content…
Communication skills allow for the efficient exchange of information through mediums, required by speech pathologists to convey information to their clients or team members accurately and affectively in respect to their client’s ability to understand and to listen and develop the client’s confidence. Critical thinking skills enable speech pathologists to analyse and evaluate issues to make informed decisions such as tailoring their clients individual needs to overcome problems and to create their clients treatment plan (Willis et al., 2012; Speech Pathology Australia,