florida80

Collaboration in clinical settings
Collaboration between different experts and institutions has become more important than ever, not just in research but also in clinical settings and in ensuring effective communication between health experts and the general public during what has become a distressing time for all.

In a statement from May 2020, Dr. Hans Henri P. Kluge, the WHO regional director for Europe, emphasized the importance of “[c]ollaboration, coordination, and communication across the public health community.”

He noted that:

“Strong and integrated management of public health services, primary care services, and […] hospitals and long-term care facilities is critical to [navigating] this delicate phase.”

Although healthcare systems everywhere have been under great strain due to the high number of COVID-19 patients requiring urgent hospital care, this has not negatively impacted healthcare professionals’ collaborative efforts, according to some recent studies.

Medical News Today spoke with Dr. David Cutler, a family medicine physician at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA, about the ways in which interprofessional collaboration in a clinical setting has changed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Interprofessional and interdisciplinary collaboration has been important to clinicians for decades, he told us, as health workers aim for stronger communication between specialists to ensure holistic care for their patients.

“Several forces are at play [that] foster greater interprofessional cooperation. First, there is the hospitalist movement,” he explained.

“Over the past decade, inpatient hospital care has transitioned from being mostly provided by physicians with practice outside the hospital who would see their few patients in the hospital daily to one where full-time, hospital-based physicians provide the primary care for inpatients.”

“Since hospitalists will generally have no prior knowledge of these patients or follow them subsequent to their hospitalization, there needs to be close collaboration between inpatient and outpatient physicians during the course of the hospitalization to optimize care,” Dr. Cutler noted.

During the pandemic, this spirit of open collaboration in the healthcare system has become all the more present, he went on to say. According to Dr. Cutler, that is because:

“[COVID-19] is treated very differently when it is mild/moderate/outpatient than when it is severe/inpatient. […] [R]ecognizing early on when hospitalization may improve outcomes requires effective and timely communication between primary care, urgent care, ER, specialists, and inpatient physicians. Getting patients to the right level of care can be a matter of life and death. Decisions regarding monoclonal antibody infusions, steroids, remdesivir, intubation, and ECMO [extracorporeal membrane oxygenation] therapy involve multiple physician specialties.”

Technological advances, such as having greater access to e-medical records, are also helping strengthen interprofessional collaboration in a clinical setting, added Dr. Cutler.

“The electronic medical record is perhaps the greatest force improving physician collaboration during the pandemic,” he told MNT. “Physicians who may even be in different healthcare systems can see prior testing and treatment done elsewhere, which promotes improved interdisciplinary care.”

“Electronic records also allow patients access to records generated by geographically diverse providers, which is a great boon to the quality of care,” he added.