Nurses and Interdisciplinary Teams: Interdisciplinary or Multidisciplinary

Nurses and Interdisciplinary Teams:

Interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary teams in the nursing team refer to the various groups that are involved in providing healthcare services. The interdisciplinary team consists of members from several practices who collect information to attain a consensus. These teams focus on outcomes while recognizing that the participants have shared responsibility to accomplish them. In most cases, the leadership of interdisciplinary teams alternates among its associates based on the skills that are required at a specific time or be totally shared at certain times. Nonetheless, the role of the leader of an interdisciplinary team is to facilitate instead of direct the collective work of the group.

Notably, an interdisciplinary team requires its participants to take responsibility for all operations like supplies, schedules, and budgets as a collective entity. In other fields like business, interdisciplinary teams are known self-directed groups since they have helped in lessening costs. These teams could have similar impacts on the healthcare and nursing field through improving communication to reduce length of stay and duplication of services (Wenckus, n.d.).

Interdisciplinary teams are important in the nursing field because nurses need to communicate effectively with other members in the healthcare setting. Effective communication is important because it promotes teamwork in the healthcare setting that facilitate easy understanding of the complex and ever-increasing patient problems. Therefore, nurses should be actively involved in interdisciplinary teams because these groups are central to effective patient care. This is largely because effective patient care is dependent of effective communication and teamwork of members in the care settings. Through active involvement in the interdisciplinary teams, nurses will have improved understanding of patient problems and how to address these complex problems. Furthermore, the importance of the active involvement of nurses in interdisciplinary teams and approaches is because of their critical role in good patient outcomes.

Nurses' involvement in an interdisciplinary team is through various strategies and ways that help them to assume an active contributing role. The first major way for nurses to take an active contributing role in the interdisciplinary team is through assuming leadership without engaging in the formal leadership position. Leadership helps nurses to have an active contributing role because the team members tend to view nurses as the eyes and ears of care services. This is mainly because nurses provide feedback regarding patient participation, share information for the members to prepare and alter goals, and emphasize the teaching that has been provided during patient education ("Interdisciplinary Collaboration," n.d.).

As a leader, the nurse will identify the problem, take responsibility for problem, evaluate outcomes, and ensure that necessary steps are taken to enhance situations for the problem. In cases where there is need for more information, the nurse will lead and communicate with the other members to collect additional information. This will be followed by regular communication of progress and updates of the situation to others members in the care setting.