The new diagnostic team

Abstract

Abstract:The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) in the recently issued report Improving Diagnosis in Health Care outlined eight major recommendations to improve the quality and safety of diagnosis. The #1 recommendation was to improve teamwork in the diagnostic process. This is a major departure from the classical approach, where the physician is solely responsible for diagnosis. In the new, patient-centric vision, the core team encompasses the patient, the physician and the associated nursing staff, with each playing an active role in the process. The expanded diagnostic team includes pathologists, radiologists, allied health professionals, medical librarians, and others. We review the roles that each of these team members will need to assume, and suggest "first steps" that each new team member can take to achieve this new dynamic.

Mapping clinical reasoning literature across the health professions: a scoping review

“…Given the representation of articles from nursing within our database, that particular perspective may have been beneficial to our analytical team. Future work should include representation from a broader range of health professionals in order to better situate clinical reasoning as a potential area for interprofessional or team-based [37] education.…”

Collaboration of Internal Medicine Physicians with Patients and Other Health Care Providers in the Diagnostic Process

“…The composition of the diagnostic team is changing. 2 For that reason, it is concerning that in the outpatient setting, interdisciplinary communication was not regularly occurring. Similarly troubling, physicians were not directly communicating with radiologists and pathologists, especially junior physicians, potentially missing an opportunity for more nuanced descriptions of testing and results.…”

“…Given the increasing complexity of patients, the multitude of choices for diagnostic testing, and the specialization of providers, team-based care is an increasingly important part of the diagnostic process. 1,2 BEffective teamwork^is a core goal in the National Academy of Medicine's (NAMs) report BImproving Diagnosis in Health Care,^to reduce diagnostic errors. 3 Our study evaluated how internal medicine physicians are partnering with four underutilized members of the diagnostic team highlighted in the NAM report: patients, interdisciplinary teams, radiologists, and pathologists.…”

Multiple hemolytic transfusion reactions misinterpreted as severe vaso‐occlusive crisis in a patient with sickle cell disease

“…In 2015, the National Academy of Medicine released a report recommending ways to improve diagnosis and minimize diagnostic errors, with optimizing teamwork at the top of the list . Graber and colleagues expand on this recommendation and outline how an institution might implement a diagnostic team to improve diagnostic accuracy, including integrating laboratory medicine trained physicians to help facilitate appropriate use of laboratory services for patient care . The concept of laboratory medicine physicians in general and TM physicians in particular as consultants is not new and has been advocated for many years .…”