Bridging disciplines in clinical practice: a comprehensive case analysis
Keywords:
Interdisciplinary Team Care, Multimorbidity, Clinical Case Analysis, Collaborative Medicine, Patient Outcomes.Abstract
Background: Multisystem disorders in patients that are difficult to solve in a single-specialty approach are becoming more and more a reality to contemporary clinical medicine. A new paradigm of dealing with this complexity has been the emergence of interdisciplinary collaboration.
Purpose: The paper will provide five well-chosen clinical cases analyses to investigate the impact of an organized interdisciplinary team (IDT) collaboration on diagnostic accuracy, therapeutic decision making as well as patient outcomes in various fields of diseases.
Methods: The retrospective case-series approach was selected and involved the examination of inpatients treated using formal IDT consultations in three tertiary-care hospitals between January 2022 and December 2023. Cases were sampled to reflect cardio metabolic, neuro-infectious, ophthalmological, musculoskeletal-geriatric, and autoimmune cases.
Findings: In all five cases, IDT was improved by delivering a structured management, which resulted in feasible clinical gains achieved, including 30-day readmission prevention, glycaemic control, neurologic, regained ambulation, and remission of an autoimmune disease. Some of the common facilitating factors were shared care plans, joint specialist ward rounds, and goal setting with patients. Some of the barriers experienced included scheduling conflicts, fragmentation of electronic health records, and role ambiguity. Inference: Multi-disciplinary teamwork with a structure is related to optimal clinical outcomes in multisystem disease. Both spread clinical translation and broad clinical translation will be fundamentally dependent on investment in communication infrastructure and formal training in IDT.
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