Medical education for physicians and other health professionals has traditionally focused on developing knowledge and technical skills relevant to individual specialties. An educational approach that was believed could enable easy and effective teamwork with other professionals. The multidisciplinary work is now a well-established model, the “gold standard,” in the delivery of healthcare, and teamwork is part of current study programs, in which medical students, nurses and other allied professions learn together during training. There is evidence that developing these skills and competencies and providing team-based care improves the quality and the handling and treatment of the patient across different clinical contexts.
The National Healthcare Workers Day, today February 20, is an occasion to emphasize the importance of teamwork in certain high-complexity conditions.
Atrial Fibrillation: Integrated Management According to the European Society of Cardiology Guidelines
The complexity of atrial fibrillation (AF) requires an integrated, multi-faceted, multidisciplinary, and holistic team approach to optimize the management of patients with this condition. Their active involvement in the care pathway, as well as allied participation from nurses and various associated professionals (AP), in collaboration with physicians, is essential and is recommended by the 2024 ESC Guidelines on the management of AF.
This is fully expressed in the AF-CARE concept, in which the inclusion of the patient and the various healthcare professionals who care for them is crucial. Integrated multidisciplinary care is a synergistic effort that must take into account the patient’s perspective in order to deliver optimal multidisciplinary care to the patient.
Pituitary Tumors: The MDT’s Role in Care
Optimal care for patients with pituitary tumors is best provided in a multidisciplinary and collaborative environment.
The benefits and advantages of the pituitary multidisciplinary team (MDT) are broad, and all relevant consensus statements and international guidelines emphasize that patients with pituitary tumors should always be managed by an MDT, in which endocrinologists and neurosurgeons play central roles alongside many other essential specialties for the diagnosis and management of pituitary tumors, including neuropathology, neuroradiology, neuro-ophthalmology, and otorhinolaryngology.
Therefore, optimal management of patients with pituitary tumors is best handled within the context of a dedicated multidisciplinary team, with specific expertise in treatment and in-care management.
Epilepsy: Patient-Centered Team Organization
Optimal care for people with epilepsy (PwE) requires a patient-centered multidisciplinary team, a concept borrowed from oncology. Specialized healthcare professionals, dietitians, psychologists, pharmacists, psychiatrists, and social workers should work alongside neurologists in the care of PwE.
It is recommended that the epilepsy patient teams be organized into 3 domains to offer optimal multidisciplinary care.
Specifically:
- Clinical care with healthcare professionals specialized in collaborating with epileptologists to effectively provide outpatient and inpatient epilepsy services, from patient education and support to telephone assistance and message management;
- Mental health and social services within which psychologists and social workers have the skills to provide, in addition to mental health services, support related to vocational guidance, housing, and transitional care, for example;
- Specialist care services that must be delivered by pharmacists, dietitians, and neuropsychiatrists to address nutritional issues and plan appropriate dietary therapies, optimize pharmacotherapy and patient adherence, address psychiatric issues in people with encephalopathy, and assist in surgical assessment. Motivational interviewing can also be used to improve therapeutic outcomes for patients.
Three interdisciplinary domains that enable the delivery of personalized and high-quality care to a wide variety of patients with epilepsy.
Cleft Lip and Craniofacial Anomalies: Outcome-Centered Multidisciplinary Model
Cleft lip and craniofacial anomalies are conditions with a high impact on the functional, psychological, and social well-being of patients and their families. To adequately address the manifestations of these conditions, the gold standard is the coordination of a team composed of several specialists.
The composition and functioning of the team, for example for the management of cleft palate, have evolved over the years but have maintained a focus on patient-centered care and outcome-based treatment.
From the early guidelines of the American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association (ACPA) for multidisciplinary care of cleft palate in 1993, revised and updated in 2022, it is established that the minimum team composition must include a coordinator, a surgeon, an orthodontist, and a speech-language pathologist. To be considered an approved team, the inclusion of additional specialists is also required, who, in periodic meetings at regular intervals, come together to evaluate speech, feeding, nutrition and growth, facial aesthetics and hearing, surgical outcomes, psychosocial well-being, and the patient’s quality of life. All of these contexts again highlight the role of integrated healthcare professionals in the optimal management of high-complexity patients. Bibliography Dow e J, Cronshaw H, Frerk C. Learning from the multidisciplinary team: advancing patient care through collaboration. Br J Hosp Med (London), 2024 May 30;85(5):1-4. Doi: 10.12968/hmed.2023.0387 Desteghe L, Lee G, Antoniou S et al. A multidisciplinary team approach in the 2024 ESC guidelines for the management of patients with Atrial Fibrillation-what is the role of nurses and allied professionals? A Clinical Consensus Statement of the Association of Cardiovascular Nursing and Allied Professions (ACNAP) and the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) of the ESC. Eur J Cardiovasc Nurs, 2025, 24(6):828-840. Doi: 10.1093/eurjcn/zvaf083.
Stern J, Stanton S, Howe-Martin L et al. The Multidisciplinary Team in the Treatment of Patients With Epilepsy. Epilepsy Curr, 2024, 30:15357597241242250. Doi: 10.1177/15357597241242250
Hartzell LD, Bady E. Multidisciplinary Cleft Care. Facila Plast Surg Clin North Am, 2025 Nov;33(4):477-485. Doi: 10.1016/j.fsc.2025.06.004
Abbonati a Karla Miller
