Creating a Culture for Interdisciplinary Collaborative Professional Practice

The future of the health system is dependent on health professionals re-tooling the way we practice together. No longer can a multi-disciplinary model support the complex health needs of many clients nor can any one-health profession have all the knowledge needed to provide total patient-centred care. However, our current education and health systems are structured around a multidisciplinary model of practice with physicians or nurse practitioners as decision-makers and rarely are clients included in care planning. True interdisciplinary practice is defined as a partnership between a team of health professionals and a client in a participatory, collaborative and coordinated approach to shared decision-making around health issues, requires a revamping of how future health professionals are educated and how the system can accommodate shared decision-making. A client-centered collaborative professional practice model is proposed in this paper as a means for fostering and facilitating the culture for this change.