Fostering effective team cooperation and communication: Developing community standards within interdisciplinary...

Cognitive rehabilitation is a promising and necessary component of interdisciplinary treatment for brain injured patients, but it remains an area that lacks universal definitions, empirically validated constructs, or standards of practice. This situation leads to difficulties for interdisciplinary teams in cognitive rehabilitation settings, since definitions, conceptions, and labels of cognitive constructs can differ across team members and disciplines. In order to implement effective cognitive rehabilitation in a given setting, it is necessary to establish a set of 'community standards' that will compensate for the lack of universal standards in the broader cognitive rehabilitation landscape. These community standards will improve team functioning by facilitating communication between disciplines and identifying the team's preferred treatment strategies. Such a project was undertaken by a task force at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine, Rusk Rehabilitation Center. The process of establishing such a task force and the need for establishing community standards are described and outlined.