Multi Professional Team: Coordination and Communication

Abstract

An effective collective consciousness of the multiprofessional team delivering integrated orthogeriatric care to fragility fracture patients is essential. Obviously, that requires good communication between the team members. The more each healthcare professional knows and understands the actions of the other professionals, the better their collective care will be. This applies to the daily care of an individual patient but also to the evolution and incremental improvement of the service as a whole. The clinical leaders who instigate the orthogeriatric service need to ensure that there is a locally-owned statement, or protocol of some kind that is agreed among all the relevant professionals. Once that is in place, its reliable delivery for every patient demands reliable communication between team members. The mechanisms for ensuring good communication include multidisciplinary consultant-led ward rounds and efficient note-keeping, based wherever possible on standard proformas. These can help to avoid duplication, which is inefficient, and missing out key steps, which is dangerous. Once the surgeon has performed the necessary operation, the logical person to lead the subsequent integrated care is the geriatrician (or equivalent physician). If the trauma unit is able to participate in a Hip Fracture Audit Database system, this will greatly help the development of the collective consciousness and thus the evolution of the unit.