Interdisciplinary teams and Multidisciplinary teams

P_RN, ADN, RN · Jan 4, 2006

They sound quite similar don't they?

http://www.members.shaw.ca/anderson.r/teams.html

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_development/issue/articles/2100/multidisciplinary_research_today_s_hottest_buzzword

And that's the full extent of what I could find.

elkpark · Jan 4, 2006

I have worked in psych in the US for many (many, many) years, and the term "multidisciplinary team" was used first -- it referred to a treatment team in an inpatient or outpatient psych setting which included members of several different disciplines (a psychiatrist, nurse, psychologist, social worker, perhaps occupational or recreational therapist, maybe a nutritionist if there were particular dietary issues, etc ...) as opposed to seeing a single person for psychotherapy.

For many inpatient psych facilities, this had been a big change (part of the '60s humanist revolution in psych) from the older style of just providing room, board, and basic safety for the patient while s/he had daily individual psychotherapy with her/his psychiatrist/analyst. For other places, it was the way they had done things for a long time.

By the '80s, "multidisciplinary team" had become standard terminology for long enough that people felt it needed to be changed (the psych world likes to change its jargon every decade or so, so that people who are not "in the loop" will continue to not know what we are talking about ... :chuckle ), so they started using "interdisciplinary team." In my personal professional experience, it meant exactly the same as "multidisciplinary" but the term "interdisciplinary" was supposedly "better" because it was supposed to imply/indicate (more so than "multidisciplinary") that the team members from the various disciplines collaborated on providing the best care to the client, rather than just each doing their own professional thing (perhaps because the word reminds one of "interdependent"?) That's the best explanation of the difference I ever got from anyone. In real life, it was purely a substitution of a new trendy term for an older (and, hence, no longer trendy) one. :)

That's how it has worked in psych in the US -- I have no idea whether my experience has any relevance to palliative care in the UK, but maybe it applies. Best wishes. :)