Geriatrics Interdisciplinary Team Meeting

One of my favorite parts of the Family Medicine was the weekly Geriatrics Interdisciplinary Team Meetings.  Every Tuesday, instead of morning meeting, we attended a meeting with various healthcare professionals including medical residents, nurses, physicians, dietitians, physical therapists, social workers, and clinical psychologists.  It was the most complete interdisciplinary team that I had ever seen.  The meeting began with a medical resident presenting a patient case.  On this particular day, the patient case revolved around an elderly gentleman with an ileus.  After presenting the chief complaint, history of present illness, relevant labs and imaging, and medications, the resident passed the case on to the other health care professionals to comment on.

It was exciting to see so many different specialties contributing their expertise on the patient case:
Pharmacist: did not make any changes to the medications, but recommended monitoring of renal function and electrolytes due to the patient being on diuretics
Physical Therapy:  assessed the patient's day to day progress in terms of mobility
Social Worker:  commented on the patient's living situation at home prior to admission, relatives that could be potential caretakers, and discharge plans
Clinical Psychologist:  assessed the patient's understanding of reality and discussed with family members about the patient's mental state at his age
Attending Physician:  chimed in with relevant questions from time to time

Once all of the different specialties made their comments, the resident presented the current literature on the topic discussion, which this week was, the treatment of ileus.  Usually, the resident presented it by going over the literature, and then comparing it with the course of therapy they chose to go with at NTUH.  At the end, the attending physician provided closing comments and additional points.

Although there are rarely situations in which there is enough time and resources to devote to one patient case such as this, I do think that it stresses the importance of looking at a problem from different perspectives.  Every health care professional brought up points that the other professions would not have considered otherwise.  The concept of a healthcare team in improving patient care is at work here and it would be great to see more of it.

Here is a photo of the resident going over imaging during the meeting.