The Multidisciplinary Approach

One of the great advantages of the tertiary academic center is that you can get a lot of specialists. Patients who undergo complex neurosurgery and come to the ICU are overseen by their surgeons, a team with expertise in neurocritical care, and us - the medical intensivists. By having multiple people look at all the data from different viewpoints, we hope to harness different expertises and skill sets. The neurosurgeon manages the extraventricular drain, the neurologists adjust the antiepilpetics, and we take care of the antibiotics. And if an unclear clinical problem arises, we put our heads together to try to solve it. Or at least, we're supposed to. The problem with having multiple teams is akin to too many cooks in the kitchen. Occasionally, we don't see eye-to-eye on all the active issues or we find that the primary decision makers have different priorities than we do. It reminds me how crucial communication is for all the teams to come to a consensus about what's best for the patient.