University Report: Multidisciplinary Team in Care Management Analysis

This report delves into the critical role of multidisciplinary teams in care management, particularly for patients with conditions like motor neuron disease. It explores the diverse symptoms these patients face, necessitating the involvement of various healthcare professionals such as physiotherapists, speech therapists, respiratory experts, dieticians, and nursing teams. The report highlights the importance of effective team leadership, emphasizing the role of a case manager in coordinating care, facilitating communication, and ensuring individualized patient plans. It also discusses the significance of the MND association care advisor in connecting patients and families with essential services. Furthermore, the report analyzes a case study, identifying issues such as high turnover rates in physiotherapy departments, which negatively impact patient satisfaction and team performance. It suggests solutions like implementing retention programs, providing training, and addressing professional concerns to improve team efficiency and patient outcomes. The report references several studies to support its findings, offering a comprehensive overview of the challenges and best practices in multidisciplinary care settings.

Running head: MULTIISCIPLINARY TEAM IN CARE MANAGEMENT
MULTIISCIPLINARY TEAM IN CARE MANAGEMENT
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Answer 1:
1. Varieties of symptoms often remain associated with patients who suffer from motor neuron
diseases. These include cramps as well as muscle cramping, stumbling due to the occurrence of
weakness in the on the muscles of the leg. Moreover, they may also face difficulty in holding of
different objects which may be caused due to various kinds of weakness in the muscles of hands.
Physiotherapists take an active role in handling these symptoms effectively. It also results in
slurring of the speeches as well as swallowing difficulties for which speech therapist are required
to provide better quality life. These mainly occur due to the weakness of tongue as well as the
throat muscles. With the gradual progression of the diseases, breathing difficulties also take
place due to decreased capacity of the lung capacity which mainly occurs with the muscle
weakness for which respiratory experts or therapists are important. Moreover fatigue occurs with
the muscle exhaustion, metabolic changes, weight loss, reduced food intake and many others. As
a result dieticians are important. Insomnia also takes place due to discomfort; pain form joints as
well as muscles, dry mouth (Bakker et al., 2015). Mild changes cognitive skills, behavioral
change, change in fronto- temporal cognitive regions also take place. For all these, nursing teams
are appointed to take an overall care of the patient. Therefore all these factors often requires a
multidisciplinary team who where each professional will handle each symptoms effectively so
that a comprehensive care is provided to the patient and each of his symptom is handled with
care.
2. The healthcare team should be handled by a responsible professional who will mainly act as
the linking factor in maintaining the multidisciplinary team assuring that proper communication,
meeting, scheduling of the time period and allocation, developing interventions as well as
evaluation the outcome of the care given by all the members of the team (Mc Connel et al.,

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2015). The team should b led by the case manager as he has the capability of directly taking care
of the patient’s priorities on a comprehensive basis. After the general practitioner declares his
diagnosis, it often becomes difficult for conveying different information to different
professionals and also takes them together to ensure proper individual care plan for each
professional. In such a case, a case manager mainly takes the role of a coordinator among the
different team members who maintains regular contact with the patient and at the same time
organizes regular conferences and team meetings (Hobson et al., 2016). On one hand, he or she
initiates effective as well as timely response according to the needs of the patient and on the
other hand liaises with the service of the team members. Otherwise, a proper planned and
arranged way of systematically carrying on a care plan will not take place. Hence the care
manager mainly leads the team.
The most important person of the team is the MND association care advisor. He is considered to
be most important as he helps the patients and his families to connect with the services they
need. A large number of services like speech therapy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy,
respiratory specialist and other are required to tackle each symptom respectively but arranging
meetings and setting their schedules might not be possible for the patient. In such scenario, the
case advisor helps them to connect with the service and also provide them with ongoing
information to families as well as service providers as the needs arise in the person with gradual
progression of the disease (O’Brien & Preston, 2015).
Case study 4:
1.There has been an exceptional increase in the turnover rates in the physiotherapy departments.
There has been unstable environment in the department as a result of which care delivery from

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the multidisciplinary team has been affected. It is resulting in low patient satisfaction and is
therefore increasing the number of complaints against the entire team as the comprehensive care
is not being provided. As new individuals are recruited frequently, they are not being able to
adapt to the working culture of the team. As a result of this, it is found that they are playing the
blame games by being exceptionally confrontational. Moreover, they are frequently absent which
hampers the effective care which he was assigned to provide to the patient which leads to patient
dissatisfaction and also loss of reputation in the name of the entire multidisciplinary team as
well. Moreover due to frequent changing of staffs, it also becomes difficult for other
physiotherapist to delegate his job for the day (Ellis & Bach, 2015). Moreover he also fails to
provide update about the patients to the team which hampers the team planning as other team
members could not evaluate the recovery process of the patient. They also fail to proceed with
further planning of interventions and as a result the overall service delivery also gets delayed and
entire scheduling needs to be changed again. Hence, these hamper patient safety and also provide
a low quality service delivery which decreases patient satisfaction as well as reputation of the
organization.
2. Proper healthcare researchers need to be appointed who would mainly conduct both
observational as well as survey analysis in order to mainly depict the main reason for turnover
for the physiotherapy professionals. Once the main factor resulting in turnover gets evaluated,
the researcher team may develop a retention program which would help them to retain the
professional and at the same time ensure that they are satisfied with their job and are free from
any anxieties and stress and reduce turnover rates (Cherry & Jacob, 2016). Secondly, the
professionals should also be allocated for training classes and workshops as they are not being
able to catch on with the trend of working in multi-dimensional team. They are lacking the

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characteristics of working as a team member with improper methods of communication,
behavior and skills. Moreover they are also not up to date about reports which show that they are
not skilled enough to handle patients effectively and perform as a proper team member.
Therefore, physiotherapists should be trained to perform their work efficiently so that patients
are satisfied (Boggosian et al. 2014). Moreover, they should be also sent for workshops so that
they can understand the culture in a well knit team and how responsibly the activities need to be
carried out. Moreover, the organization should also look obverse the interests of the
professionals so that they also feel accepted in the organization and their real issues can be noted
(Lewis et al., 2016). In this way, one can overcome the present issue in the organization and
come up with a more efficient team work form every individuals of the team.

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References:
Bakker, M., Creemers, H., Schipper, K., Beelen, A., Grupstra, H., Nollet, F., & Abma, T. (2015).
Need and value of case management in multidisciplinary ALS care: a qualitative study on
the perspectives of patients, spousal caregivers and professionals. Amyotrophic Lateral
Sclerosis and Frontotemporal Degeneration, 16(3-4), 180-186.
Bogossian, F., Cooper, S., Cant, R., Beauchamp, A., Porter, J., Kain, V., ... & FIRST2ACT™
Research Team. (2014). Undergraduate nursing students' performance in recognising and
responding to sudden patient deterioration in high psychological fidelity simulated
environments: an Australian multi-centre study. Nurse education today, 34(5), 691-696.
Cherry, B., & Jacob, S. R. (2016). Contemporary nursing: Issues, trends, & management.
Elsevier Health Sciences.
Ellis, P., & Bach, S. (2015). Leadership, management and team working in nursing. Learning
Matters.
Hobson, E. V., Harwood, C. A., McDermott, C. J., & Shaw, P. J. (2016). Clinical aspects of
motor neurone disease. Medicine, 44(9), 552-556.

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Lewis, S.L., Bucher, L., Heitkemper, M.M., Harding, M.M., Kwong, J. and Roberts, D.,
2016. Medical-Surgical Nursing-E-Book: Assessment and Management of Clinical
Problems, Single Volume. Elsevier Health Sciences.
McConnell, R., Vance, R., Murray, D., & Hardiman, O. (2015, November). An Evaluation of the
Airway Clearance Adjuncts Prescribed in an Irish Motor Neurone Disease (MND)
Multidisciplinary Team Clinic. In IRISH JOURNAL OF MEDICAL SCIENCE (Vol. 184,
pp. S503-S504). 236 GRAYS INN RD, 6TH FLOOR, LONDON WC1X 8HL,
ENGLAND: SPRINGER LONDON LTD.
O'brien, M. R., & Preston, H. (2015). Family carer perspectives of acute hospital care following
a diagnosis of motor neuron disease: a qualitative secondary analysis. BMJ supportive &
palliative care, 5(5), 503-509.