When Health Care Providers Look at Problems from Multiple Perspectives, Patients Benefit
Abstract
Health care providers have vastly different ways of seeing and treating patients, as differences in profession, specialty, experience, or background lead them to pay attention to particular signals or cues, and influence how they approach problems. While diverse perspectives and approaches to care are important, if they are not managed appropriately, they can cause misunderstandings, bias decision-making, and get in the way of the best care. Two things can help health professionals get better at communicating with each other and adopting multiple perspectives themselves: 1) creating an environment that supports perspective sharing and effective communication among team members; and 2) building people’s capacity to adopt multiple perspectives.
Summary
Health care providers have vastly different ways of seeing and treating patients, as differences in profession, specialty, experience, or background lead them to pay attention to particular signals or cues, and influence how they approach problems. While diverse perspectives and approaches to care are important, if they are not managed appropriately, they can cause misunderstandings, bias decision-making, and get in the way of the best care. Two things can help health professionals get better at communicating with each other and adopting multiple perspectives themselves: 1) creating an environment that supports perspective sharing and effective communication among team members; and 2) building people’s capacity to adopt multiple perspectives.