Multidisciplinary Teaching: The Interaction of the Specialties

Although multidisciplinary education has been an evolving concept over the past 50 years, it has begun to gain more momentum in the last decade or so, especially in the healthcare industry. Multidisciplinary education is very appealing to many with one of the major thoughts driving the popularity being that healthcare providers need to interact as a team and one great way to achieve this teamwork is to train together. Multidisciplinary education is truly a continuum that varies from simply having a guest speaker from another specialty to actual group learning with multiple specialties in a classroom being taught by authorities from multiple specialties. Many administrators believe that there are traditional barriers that exist between healthcare providers, and these administrators feel that multidisciplinary education is a great way to break down traditional barriers, especially when the trainees are of different levels of education (i.e., nursing and physicians). There is now greater pressure than ever to develop multidisciplinary educational programs due to beliefs that such training will result in major improvements in the quality and cost-effectiveness of patient care.