Does interprofessionality work in Swiss ICUs and should it be encouraged?

Abstract

A charter for the collaboration of healthcare specialists has recently been proposed by the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, to promote interprofessionality in daily clinical practice. This article reviews several aspects of this concept, from definition and basic principles to the potential benefit for the patients and caregivers, and it discusses the difficulties in implementing interprofessional teamwork in the daily practice of an intensive care unit (ICU). Although collaborative and interprofessional teamwork seems a logical approach in the care of critically ill patients, little published evidence shows that it really improves the level of care, meaning that this may be harder to implement than to promote. Eventually, some clues to achieve a successful realisation of interprofessional collaboration in the ICU are proposed.

Keywords

• critically ill patient
• educational training
• intensive care medicine
• interprofessionality
• teamwork