In a recent note, I discussed how the overall practice of clinical pathology was expanding into clinical diagnostics partly on the basis of the growing popularity of diagnostic management teams (DMTs) (see: A Major Change Now Occurring in Both Clinical Pathology and Anatomic Pathology). DMTs consist of a group of laboratory experts collaborating with clinicians in complex cases. Another example of the team approach in healthcare is the Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) that is most common in cancer care (see: Multidisciplinary team working in cancer: what is the evidence?). MDTs represent an example of the team approach in diagnostics and therapeutics and the DMT is an analogue primarily on the diagnostic side.
There are two major goals for deploying hospital teams like DMTs and MDTs. The first is that they bring broader expertise to bear at critical junctures for patients -- the time of diagnosis and the selection of a treatment on the basis of the best diagnosis. A second goal with MDTs is based on the fact that the majority of physicians are highly specialized and tend to pursue goals that they deem desirable based on their speciality bias. For example, surgeons tend to favor surgical interventions and radiation therapists tend to favor this type of treatment. MDT consensus conferences help to correct this balance with a wide variety of specialists providing input around the table.
Here's a quote from an article on team performance that nicely summarizes the advantages of teams and teamwork (see: Measuring Team Performance in Simulation-Based Training: Adopting Best Practices for Healthcare):
An emphasis on teamwork and team training is a hallmark of high reliability organizations such as those in aviation and nuclear power generation industries. The successes in in- creasing safety via team training in these industries has been translated into successful interventions with team training components in medical domains as well beginning with anesthesiology, emergency medicine, and others such as the military healthcare system at large. Essentially, it has been recognized that individual competence in clinical skills is not enough; team coordination, communication, and co- operation skills are essential to effective and safe performance.
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