Effective interdisciplinary communication is at the heart of clinical decision-making in contemporary health-care environments. Efforts to enhance communication and work processes among nurses and doctors in an infants-and-toddler ward of a specialist paediatric hospital led to the establishment of Surgical Morning Meetings (SMMs). To evaluate the experiences of nursing and medical team members and their perceptions of the changes brought about by the SMM, qualitative evaluation of the SMM was undertaken through semistructured interviews. The analysis identified four major areas of impact: predictability: a nice way to start the day, which captured the ways in which the SMM led to better planning of the day's activities, knowledge and perspectives: learning from each other, which highlighted the way that ongoing discussions led to greater understanding and respect, relationships and support: getting to know you, which reflected the benefits derived from greater commitment, and desired outcomes: making a difference to staff, children and families. Overall, we believe that initiatives as simple as discussions among nurses and doctors can enhance personal and professional experience and lead to improved health outcomes for our patients.

In 2000, an interdisciplinary surgical morning meeting (SMM) was introduced into the infants' and toddlers' ward of a major paediatric hospital to help overcome a number of communication and work process problems among the health professionals providing care to children/families. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of the SMM on a range of work practices. Comparative design including pre- and postintervention data collection was used. Data were collected on 100 patient records. Twenty children, from each of the five diagnostic-related groups most commonly admitted to the ward, were included. Demographic, medical review, documentation, critical incidents and complaint variables were obtained from three sources: the hospital clinical information system, the children's medical records and the hospital reporting systems for complaints and critical incidents. Children in the postintervention group were significantly more likely to be reviewed regularly by medical staff, to be reviewed in the morning, to have plans for discharge documented regularly throughout their admission and to have admission summary sheets completed at the time of discharge. The findings of the quantitative evaluation add some weight to the arguments for the purposely structured introduction of interdisciplinary teams into acute-care environments.