#interdisciplinary care

PSA: when you work in an academic institution and you receive a call from a community provider, it is so important to remember that you are colleagues; take opportunities to educate, not crucify. This is especially important when you are so lucky to be in a tertiary centre with ALL the resources--many of the centres that are calling you for help, advice, or transfer to your centre do NOT have access to these things (hence why they are calling you!). It really grinds my gears when I hear colleagues making comments like, “I can’t believe they did ___, what were they thinking? Obviously they should have done ___.” ...well, no, it was probably not obvious to that provider at the time they saw the patient and with the information and resources they had at the time. By the time you get the call, you’ll probably have had the benefit of some time, and hindsight is 20/20.

Sometimes I find myself talking from the “ivory tower”, and when I catch myself I feel so terrible about it! Our colleagues transferring patients to us are doing the best they can with what they’ve got--the least we can do is meet them halfway. Talking down to or about other providers does not help our patients. And sometimes we find ourselves in the sticky situation of having patients question what other providers did, and usually I find the best answer is, “Unfortunately, I cannot comment on what the other provider saw or thought at that time. They didn’t have the benefit of all this information I have now, since you last saw them. So with this additional information, my impression is ___ and my plan is ___.” 

In the realm of healthcare, a growing emphasis is being placed on holistic nursing, a practice that recognizes the interconnectedness of the mind, body, and spirit in achieving optimal health and wellness. Holistic nurses view individuals as holistic beings, acknowledging that physical symptoms are often influenced by emotional, psychological, and social factors. In this blog post, we will look…

"No man is an island." --John Donne

Previously unexposed to interdisciplinary care (IDC), the rotation provided me my first experience of being involved in an interdisciplinary care team and it helped clarify misinterpretations and misunderstandings of what it meant to be in an IDC team.

Our patient, AA, was a 12-year old girl diagnosed with cerebral spastic quadriplegia. Like the patient mentioned in my previous journal entry, she, too, could not roll and sit by herself. She cannot feed herself and is only able to eat mashed food with manual facilitation as she cannot chew. She also had difficulty maintaining attention when presented with various objects like toys or food and was often observed staring into the background. She does not recognize her own name.

The focus of the sessions with the patient was on more functional activities such as feeding, with physical therapy-related activities, such as maintenance of supported sitting or promotion of good head control, taking the backseat. Although it has already been said time and time again in lectures that the achievement of developmental milestones isn't the end all and be all of the things that we do for our pediatric clients and that functional activity is the ultimate goal--seeing it in actual practice further reinforced the idea that PTs generally provide the foundations by which patients are able to perform other activities that are meaningful to them. To put it simply, a baby probably wouldn't be glad that he/she is already able to crawl, but he/she would be happy that he/she can crawl towards his/her favorite toy. There's a minor difference, but it's an important distinction to recognize all the same.