Interdisciplinary Team Case Study

Three factors that could potentially impact the interdisciplinary team on my care project would be communication, professional preparation, and personality. According to Rubenfeld and Scheffer (2015) communication is vital to interprofessional teams (IPT) and the basis for effective communication is the ability to think critically. From my experience, in order for IPTs to be operational they need to speak the same language and the best way to accomplish this undertaking is to have standardized communication so ambiguity is reduced. An example of language meaning different things for different people would be using the acronym BID, which can mean a medication, is dispensed every twelve hours or at 9am and 5pm. Not only do members of a team need to communicate using one language, they also need to be prepared. …show more content…
The point of being prepared is further stressed because professionals become disenchanted to change when they perceive their time is being wasted. The last barrier in forming a collaborative team lies in the blending of different personalities. Bringing individuals together is always going to have some challenges, but before any meeting occurs, it is important to establish and write-down the expectations of each team member. Sometimes, as was the case when launching SIBR on my unit, we actually had generalized scripts written out for each discipline so they would know what information they were expected to know and communicate and how they should conduct themselves in front of the patient. When this idea was presented there were a lot of “duh” expressions that came to people’s faces, but without the script, there was no direction and without direction chaos