President's Message: There IS an "I" in Team

An interdisciplinary team includes many healthcare professionals working together and utilizing their skills, knowledge, and expertise to provide holistic and quality patient care.
Physicians
The physician's primary responsibility is to diagnose illness and direct the medical or surgical treatment of the condition. The authority to admit patients to a healthcare agency or institution and practice care within that setting is granted to physicians by the healthcare agency or institution...

An interdisciplinary team includes many healthcare professionals working together and utilizing their skills, knowledge, and expertise to provide holistic and quality patient care. Here are a few more healthcare professionals.
Physical Therapist
A physical therapist (PT) aims to restore function or prevent additional impairment in a patient following an injury or disease. Massage, heat, cold, water, sonar waves, exercises, and electrical stimulation are some treatments used by PTs to treat...

A communication barrier is any distortion or interruption during a conversation, resulting in miscommunication of the message. A good communicator should know these barriers and continuously check for the listener's understanding by obtaining feedback.
Communication barriers include the following:
Physiological barriers: They are limitations caused by a person's health condition or disability, such as hearing loss, poor eyesight, illness, or unconsciousness. An example to overcome this...

The barriers to effective communication also include cultural barriers, semantic barriers, gender barriers, and time constraints.
Cultural barriers:
Differences in values, beliefs, religion, knowledge, and tradition can significantly impact communication. Awareness of nonverbal cues is critical, especially when conversing with a patient from a different culture. What appears appropriate in one culture may be inappropriate in another.
Semantic barriers:
As a result of their tendency to use...

When in group settings, we are often influenced by the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors around us. Groupthink is another phenomenon of conformity where modification of the opinions of members in a group aligns with what they believe is the group consensus (Janis, 1972). In such situations, the group often takes action that individuals would not perform outside the group setting because groups make more extreme decisions than individuals do. Moreover, groupthink can hinder opposing trains of...