Multidisciplinary Teams, Inter-Professionalism and the AAPL

Multidisciplinary Teams

Until recently, healthcare was primarily physician-centric and disease-focused. This focus has driven not only care delivery but also a majority of the business practices within the industry for decades. Today, there is a rapid shift to team-based approaches and population health and wellness.

As many healthcare organizations grapple with what a team-based approach means and how to successfully implement team-based clinical care, a variety of initiatives around the country and the world are aimed at moving the industry toward multi-professional and inter-professional team-based education.

Although physicians have moved in the direction of this new horizon, there is a long way to go. Pride in being a physician who is passionate about quality patient care is a professional expectation grounded in centuries of behavior. The pride and passion for the physician “team” will not be displaced — nor should it.

Yet the world is rapidly changing, and the physician workforce must continue to change as well. Other clinical disciplines and non-clinical professionals also have pride and passion for their respective disciplines. They, too, want to work at the “top of their licenses.”

Although the AAPL has a legacy of promoting physician-led care and physician-led teams, the organization recognizes the importance of the changing environment and highly respects each of the non-physician disciplines active in healthcare delivery.

Inter-Professionalism and Physician Leadership

The entire healthcare industry is ultimately about patient-centered care. All healthcare professionals, regardless of discipline or model of care delivery they support, are playing on the same team for patients.

Although many physicians tend toward autonomy and independence, it is important to recognize that this behavior can directly or indirectly impede successful patient care outcomes. It also can create barriers to forming, leading, or participating in successful teams.

Physicians must develop deeper insights into why they resist working on teams and learn how they can modulate and channel this behavior into positive action without losing their pride and passion.

AAPL understands it will take some time for formal medical education programs to foster different behaviors in the student and resident population, but those changes are occurring. It also will, therefore, take time for the current physician workforce to gradually adjust to initiating and promoting collaboration and partnering.

As that transition unfolds, the association promotes strategies that support the move from command-and-control behaviors to an atmosphere of collaboration and success for all members of a team or organization.

The association strives to expand the impact of physician leadership that embraces and promotes inter-professionalism, ultimately improving healthcare globally by independently and collaboratively innovating and delivering exceptional offerings.

Specifically, the association has active initiatives or is in serious discussions with several non-physician disciplines, including nursing, pharmacists, financial managers, non-clinical administrators, the legal community, healthcare researchers and information management professionals, to emphasize a team-based approach to care.

Excerpted from Physician Leadership: More Valuable Than Ever —A White Paper from the American Association for Physician Leadership by Peter B. Angood, MD, FRCS(C), FACS, MCCM, FAAPL(Hon).