Interdisciplinary learning and collaboration with technology

Interdisciplinary education is a necessity in healthcare today. In order to improve patient outcomes and provide optimal care for patients requires a team effort. Currently, many specialties still practice separately but in order to break down these barriers, collaboration between different specialties needs to begin before entering in the workforce. Reform can begin with universities and training programs to expand interdisciplinary educational opportunities and programs to help foster collaboration among students before they enter the health workforce.

Collaboration through a variety of disciplines can be seen more in hospitals today. Although there is still a long way to go before and a cultural shift is required before each discipline is seen as an equal contributor to patient outcomes, collaboration is becoming more prominent. One example of this collaboration including the use of technology is telemedicine. Telemedicine can be defined as the diagnosis and treatment of a patient through the use of telecommunication technology. A good resource for the use of telecommunication can be found in this blog. This blog discusses healthcare trends including the use of telemedicine.

As telemedicine is becoming more prominent in the healthcare industry, it only makes sense that this type of collaboration should start in the classroom. Some schools that offer educational programs are including collaboration early on in certain classes. This includes nursing, pharmacy and respiratory students all working together and becoming familiar with all disciplines contributions to patient outcomes. I feel this interdisciplinary collaboration to be beneficial to students as they are entering the field of nursing understanding all disciplines roles and contributions.

I can think of many examples of interdisciplinary collaboration in the workplace and many examples that could have benefitted from more collaboration. One example of interdisciplinary collaboration through the use of technology occurred when I was just entering nursing school. I was working as a pharmacy technician in a small, rural hospital and was delivering medications to the ICU. As I was entering the medication room, I noticed a computer on top of rolling workstation. There was a team of nurses and doctors in a patients room along with the portable workstation. I asked the nurse what was going on and she stated there was a teleconference going on with a patient that was too sick to travel. The patient was being diagnosed and assessed by an intensivist at a large metropolitan hospital. I found that to be fascinating that other physicians and healthcare workers could contribute to the patients care even though they were hours away, and that was 12 years ago. It is amazing to see the advancements that have occurred since then. I found a case study that shows the multiple benefits of telemedicine on patient outcomes and can be found here.