It’s that time again….. Spring time…. and conference time. This week, the Syndicom crew are at the AAOS (American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons) conference in Las Vegas to connect with others about leading edge technologies and techniques; discuss product development; attend demonstrations and collaborate with other companies from around the world. The AAOS annual meeting is anticipated to bring over 14,000 domestic and international orthopedic surgeons, as well as other healthcare professionals! Please stop by – we’ll be at booth 666!

I’ve just returned from a conference myself. Conferences are excellent places to rekindle friendships or reconnect with people you went to school with, make contact with the people you have been working collaboratively with in SpineConnect face to face and have a conversation, as well as learn and share new things. They are also great culturing instruments, reminding us to the ways in which we work, the communicative actions that ground community, and the values we all share as professionals. Professional and occupational cultures intrigue me because we like to put people with different titles in different boxes and when we do, we lose sight of the ways in which we can work similarly. Recently at a Communication in Healthcare conference, for example, I attended a panel on ‘crew resource management’ techniques adopted by the airline industry based on military air force crews and now being translated into medical and clinical practice to dissect the ‘near miss’ encounters that happen in health care.

Along these lines, the BBC recently posted a story on the kinds of things pilots can teach surgeons, suggesting that something as simple as briefing the crew before a procedure and debriefing them after has an extraordinary impact on performance and reduces the chances of a ‘near miss’. This is a similar argument made by researchers in NEJM last month around the use of checklists. Interestingly enough though, such a focus on teamwork is resisted by many surgeons and physicians as it seems to run ‘counter to their professional culture and training’. That is, surgeons and physicians are trained to know what is going on, make independent decisions, monitor everything and assume full responsibility as an individual. Teamwork turns that on its head as duties are delegated, responsibility becomes distributed and now you have to make collaborative decisions.

Airline pilots can effectively terminate their career if they can’t work effectively in a team. John Black, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, believes it is vital that the whole operating team work together. I have watched multidisciplinary health care teams engage in such practice as they enter into clinic appointments for children suffering from muscular disorders. At the beginning of the morning, each file is presented with all specialties adding in additional knowledge and covering the care plan. They will not meet again, unless in passing over the course of the day, until the end of the day to debrief. The clinic has 2 appointment times, one for the morning and one for the afternoon and they operate a ‘one stop shop’ so the families can see all the specialists they need to see in one session. The process saves time, increases communication and improves continuity of care and the patient’s experience.

So whether you are at AAOS or not, I offer you this challenge — how can you translate the collaborative processes in which you engage in conferences and through Spine Connect into your everyday clinical practice? How can you import more team based care into your practice as well as your decision making? It is after all, Spring — a time for new beginnings!

With thanks to DavidBole for his ladders!

Together we rise!

Kirsten Broadfoot

Tags: AAOS, BBC, checklists, clinical practice, clinical practice guidelines, collaboration, Communication in healthcare, community, conference, conferences, crew resource management, health professionals, healthcare professionals, John Black, Las Vegas, multidisciplinary health teams, multidisciplinary teams, near miss, NEJM, nejm journal, professional culture, professional development culture, royal college of surgeons, spineconnect, syndicom, teamwork

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 3:08 pm and is filed under Blog.