View the World Through a Different Lens: Shadowing Another Provider

摘要

The delivery of health care is specialized, with multiple professionals representing different disciplines caring for the patient. Although specialization is intended to provide higher-quality care from each provider, the compilation of providers into an interdisciplinary team can increase the potential for communication, collaboration, and teamwork breakdowns. In addition, while each health care provider is an expert in his or her discipline, very few providers understand the daily responsibilities, needs, communication, and teamwork issues of other disciplines. Communication is an important thread that weaves the various disciplines into an effective interdisciplinary team. When communication is ineffective, collaboration and teamwork fail, and patients are at increased risk of medical mistakes, sentinel events, or even death. In September 2004, we developed Shadowing Another Provider (SAP) as a structured tool to help health care providers identify the teamwork, communication, and collaboration issues that affect patient care delivery from the perspective of other professional disciplines. The goals of this tool are twofold, as follows: 1. To identify the defects in communication, collaboration, and teamwork between the different disciplines. 2. To identify methods to resolve these problems to optimize patient care delivery. To do this we ask the person shadowing to see things from the perspective of the person being shadowed.