How to Succeed in an Interdisciplinary Team

The interdisciplinary approach has been used in health care for a long time and has shown benefits for both practitioners in the team and the patient receiving the treatment. But what exactly is an interdisciplinary team, and who can be part of one? The Core Medical Group provides a comprehensive definition to explain interdisciplinary teamwork: 

“Interdisciplinary teamwork is a complex process involving two or more health professionals with complementary backgrounds and skills. In this process, team members share common health goals in assessing, planning, or evaluating patient care. This is accomplished through interdependent collaboration, open communication, and shared decision-making.”  

A health care interdisciplinary team may consist of nurses with different specialties, different types of therapists, social workers, surgeons, physicians, unit clerks, and so much more, depending on the treatment plan for the patient. For example, while dealing with the aging population, having members on the team who have completed a recreational therapy program or a gerontology course will provide a proactive and innovative treatment plan using modalities and techniques no one else on the team may be trained on.   

Not Only Heath Care 

Health care is not the only industry that uses this approach. Education and other human services fields have also seen positive results in the classroom and elsewhere. An education team may consist of the main teacher, support staff, education assistants, registered behavior technicians, school counsellors, and the administration team. Having an education team with staff members that have received RBT training, Orton Gillingham training, or completed autism courses can bring a lot of knowledge, experience, and new methods to the classroom.    

Characteristics of a Good Team 

Working in such a diverse team can be hard to navigate. A team of researchers from Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom conducted a study trying to figure out the characteristics of a good interdisciplinary team using literature review and interviewing people who currently work in this type of team. The people who currently work as team members in an interdisciplinary team came up with thirteen characteristics including:   

1. Good Communication: This refers to intra-team communication and having two-way communication of being able to listen and speak on any issues or challenges happening within the team. It is said that bigger teams can hinder good communication as not everyone gets heard at the top of the team, a communication course can teach you the top-notch communication skills that are needed to succeed in a team.   
2. Respecting/Understanding Roles: Know your role, your boundaries, and limitations within the team and what you can provide towards the treatment plan. For example, don’t provide recreational therapy if you have not completed a recreational therapy program.   
3. Appropriate Skill Mix: This refers to the diversity and complementary personalities, attributes, experience, and professions within a team.   
4. Quality and Outcomes of Care: All team members want to provide the best quality of care and create the best outcomes that they can. Everyone is open to criticism and feedback and wants a way to measure results.   
5. Clear Vision: A clear purpose and vision of what the team is working towards and knowing what everyone else's role is in the team to be able to refer to team members when necessary.   
6. Personal Attributes: Many personal attributes were identified for creating an excellent team including approachability, being able to compromise, confidentiality, decisiveness, empathy, openness to learning, and personal responsibility.  
7. Training and Development Opportunities: Everyone wants the opportunity to get more training and knowledge through continuing education courses such as mindfulness training, which can increase their quality of care.   
8. Leadership and Management: Having supportive and decisive leadership is key to running a good team.  
9. Team Culture: This includes the need for trust, mutual respect, reliability, commitment and support as well as the importance of informal relationships, camaraderie, fun, and friendship between team members.  
10. Individual Rewards and Opportunity: This refers to the importance of individual returns on teamwork, which included good financial rewards; opportunities for career development; autonomy; challenge within the role and the opportunity to think outside the box.  
11. External Image of the Services: This point was brought up by only half of the participants in this study and refers to uniforms, marketing of the team, and external image portrayed to outside agencies i.e., good or poor customer service.   
12. Appropriate Team Processes and Resources: This can include many things such as physical requirements like office space and parking spots, as well as efficient procedures, allowance for privacy if needed, and workload management.   
13. Flexibility: both as a personal attribute of team members and the allowance for flexibility of roles if necessary to provide quality care.   

While this study was focused on an interdisciplinary health care team, many of these characteristics can be used for an education interdisciplinary team or even a general office work environment. Top characteristics seem to be good communication, proper leadership and management, and respect among colleagues.   

Written by: Lindsay McKay