Assignment: Interdisciplinary Communication

Create a 6–8-slide PowerPoint presentation that describes communication barriers within an interdisciplinary team and how those barriers affect patient safety and health care outcomes. Offer a solution in which you recommend evidence-based strategies to improve communication within the team and explain how the strategies benefit the team and patients.

The ability to effectively communicate as part of interdisciplinary collaboration is essential for patient safety and successful health care delivery.

Effective communication is important in all organizations and is especially important in the area of health care. Communication can come in many forms, but the crucial factor is whether the communication is effective.

Collaboration among teams is important for the delivery of appropriate medical care and for providing the specialized skills necessary to meet the needs of patients and the public. Assessing the needs of a community may involve communication across several public service providers and private entities.

Maintaining open communication and collaboration among teams is essential to assess the needs of a community or those of patients and their families within a health care system. The same communication skills must be evident within the interdisciplinary health care team, or across the public and private sectors in a community, in order to promote collaboration and understanding and to provide the utmost quality service.

Imagine you are part of an interdisciplinary health care team in your organization. Although the team has been working together for several months, communication between members is not always efficient or effective, and the situation has become stressful for everyone. The team leader asks you to develop a presentation for the team that addresses the issue.

Preparation

Search the Capella library and the Internet for scholarly and professional peer-reviewed articles on communication. You will need at least three articles to use as support for your work on this assessment.

Directions

Create a 6–8-slide PowerPoint presentation to examine the communication issue and the risk it creates for positive health care outcomes.

Describe the types of communication barriers that occur within an interdisciplinary team.
Explain how the communication barriers can impact patient safety and health care outcomes.
Recommend specific evidence-based strategies to improve communication within the team.
Explain how the strategies will benefit team members and patients.

Use the notes section of each slide to expand your points and cite your supporting evidence. Also, include a title slide and a reference slide that lists the resources you used in this assessment.

Assignment: Interdisciplinary Communication