|
Professionals Team
up for Better Healthcare
The
well-known saying, "The whole is greater than the sum of
its parts" is the perfect maxim for a program being offered
at UMDNJ-School of Osteopathic Medicine (SOM). The Interdisciplinary
Healthcare (IDHC) program teaches medical professionals
to work in teams in order to provide more effective and
comprehensive care. Social workers, pharmacists, mental
and allied health professionals, dentists, nursing and medical
students and even lawyers, who work with teams of doctors,
are signing up. The two-week course combines classroom instruction
and fieldwork.
Marvin
Herring, MD, one of the course facilitators and a professor
of family medicine at SOM, says a strategy used by physicians
to provide healthcare to migrant farm workers in Southern
New Jersey in the 1980s served as a clinical model for the
course. Small groups of doctors, social workers, students
and interpreters held "office hours" two evenings a week,
from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., in a medically equipped bus they
took to farms in Burlington and Camden counties. They performed
physicals, provided limited, non-invasive treatments and
discussed preventive care and personal hygiene. Other professionals,
like dentists, mental health clinicians and dieticians,
joined the team as the need arose.
Team
medicine, although proven effective and comprehensive, does
have its own set of problems. There is sometimes the perception,
for example, that one person -- usually the physician --
is the team leader, when in fact, it is a group effort.
Finding a mutually agreeable time for everyone to meet can
be another difficulty. So can a person who doesn't respect
the opinions of the others. Possible solutions to these
and other problems are another segment of the course.
The
program is financed by a grant from the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services. SOM officials say they would
like the program to be incorporated into the school's curriculum
and for it to serve as a model for other medical schools.
|
