DELIVERING HEALTH CARE THROUGH MULTI-DISCIPLINARY TEAMS

This research examines the concept of delivering health care through multi-disciplinary teams. The applications of the multi-disciplinary team concept for the delivery of health care range from general practice environments to specialized care delivery situations (Mitchell, Cuthbert, Porter, & Abbot, 1993, pp. 39-50; O'Hara, Burns, & Closs, 1994, pp. 25-29).

The use of teams to accomplish the work of organizations is a growing practice in a wide variety of industries. The team-based approach to the accomplishment of work is a procedure "in which members of different functional departments work together in small, but more or less permanent, teams headed by the member from the most professional prestigious specialty" (Gortner, Mahler, & Nicholson, 1994, p. 111). Thus, in the delivery of health care, both the composition of a team and the professional specialty from which the team leader is drawn will vary according to the essential task responsibility assigned to a team. In a typical team-based health care service delivery situation, team members "maintain their ties to functional departments for personnel, training, promotion, and other such matters, but they work face to face principally with members of other departments to achieve the level of coordinated expertise demanded by their tasks" (p. 111).

Through the creation and functioning of teams, members of team

. . .
ealth care teams may be used with a wide variety of patients. Primary health care teams may be developed for the care of men, women, and children, as well as for any number of special classifications of patients. For purposes of illustration, however, consider a primary health care team for women patients. An ideal team for the delivery of primary health care to women would include (1) nurse-midwives, (2) nurse practitioners, (3) family practice physicians, (4) obstetrician/gynecologists, (5) mental health professionals, (6) health educators, (7) nutritionists, (8) social workers, and (9) other tertiary care specialists as required. The nurse practitioner managed clinic can serve as a focal point for a primary health care team (Reifsteck & D'Angelo, pp. 12-21). According to the theoretical concept of the multi-disciplinary team, one of the physician members of such a team would be the team leader. In actual practice, however, a nurse managed clinic might well act as the hub through which all health care services for patients would be arranged. Within this context, the assumption of additional responsibilities by nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists has been found to be effective in the combined context of cost
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2228
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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