Multidisciplinary vs. Interdisciplinary Rounds: FAQ and Best Practices

Rounding occurs when a healthcare team gathers to discuss the status of a patient and their care plan. One of the key challenges in the process is scheduling, especially with multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary rounds. Hospitals — the most frequent setting associated with rounding — are busy places, and assembling the entire care team in-person can be difficult to coordinate.

If you’re familiar with the general idea of rounding but are unsure about the specifics of multidisciplinary rounding vs. interdisciplinary rounding, we’ve got you covered. We’ll answer several of healthcare rounding’s key questions and provide best practices to overcome challenges and optimize interprofessional rounding at your facility — made easier with our customizable healthcare rounds checklist template.

Multidisciplinary and Interdisciplinary Rounding in Hospitals and Beyond: FAQ

Healthcare rounding fosters more effective workplace communication. Done at the bedside, it invites patients to the table of their own care plans. Although it’s most frequently associated with hospitals and among medical teaching teams, its value crosses all care settings and healthcare professions. To help you understand how you might best implement rounding at your facility, we’ll address some common questions.

What’s the difference between multidisciplinary rounds vs. interdisciplinary rounds?

Multidisciplinary care involves different healthcare professionals (like nurses and doctors) working parallel toward unique goals. However, interdisciplinary efforts take an integrated approach, uniting the healthcare team (beyond the physician and nurse, but including respiratory therapy, pharmacy, and others) to work collaboratively toward combined goals.

In rounding, an interdisciplinary team works to communicate and advance a unified care plan. Multidisciplinary rounds also enable better communication flow, but focus more on timely updates regarding each professional’s perspective rather than shared objectives.

How are they separate from nursing rounds?

The intent of nurse rounding is to anticipate patient needs before they arise, using a framework approach to accomplish care tasks in a timely, effective manner. Those care tasks can involve communication, but it’s not the primary goal. However, it is the focus of healthcare team rounds, which are broader and more information-based than nursing rounds (more action-oriented).

Do multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary rounding have to take place at the bedside?

No, rounding doesn’t necessarily need to occur at the bedside. However, there are many research-backed benefits to performing multidisciplinary (or interdisciplinary) bedside rounds.

• The medical plan becomes more patient-centered.
• Patients are better informed and more engaged with their care.
• Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary bedside rounding are associated with higher levels of patient satisfaction.
• It increases the amount of face time with patients and streamlines interprofessional communication, improving staff satisfaction and efficiency.

Are there any specific theories and frameworks to guide structured interdisciplinary bedside rounds?

There are many frameworks and theories that can help guide implementation or program revisions, whether the rounds are interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary. Let’s review a couple below.

Is there a standardized multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary rounds checklist for bedside use?

Although the listed frameworks were intended primarily for inpatient medical teaching teams, checklists are a research-backed structure for improving rounding quality across disciplines. Studies demonstrate that checklists benefit the consistency and quality of rounds. Though there’s no general checklist currently utilized by all healthcare institutions, the adoption of a template (customized to your organization’s needs) would be a good, evidence-based approach to rounding.

Which is best, Interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary rounds?

At the end of the day, bedside rounding is best. Whether it’s done as an interdisciplinary team or a multidisciplinary team comes down to whichever is most value-added to the specific healthcare environment. Here are some advantages and disadvantages to consider for each method.

Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Rounds: Best Practices for Healthcare Facilities

Whichever version of rounding works best for your care team will be decided by the careful consideration of each method’s advantages and disadvantages. To maximize the effectiveness of either rounding type, here are some best practices to consider.

1. Onboard the Ideal Rounding Team

For your rounding program to be successful, you must have buy-in from the participating care team members. While designing your rounding program (or revamping an existing one), select interdisciplinary participants who are eager about the research-backed benefits of rounding and are committed to a program that maximizes the potential for better outcomes.

Tips:

• Balance the representation across disciplines and experience levels when creating a rounding committee.
• Encourage buy-in through leadership role modeling. Nursing managers and even chief officers should participate in bedside rounds as often as possible.

2. Utilize Healthcare Resources

Healthcare is a fast-paced environment and rounding needs to maximize efficiency, not impede it. The best way to ensure timely yet effective rounding is by using every tool available to team members to ensure a streamlined rounding experience. This will often look like incorporating technology whenever possible, like using a computer-on-wheels to facilitate expedient access to crucial information and documentation of events.

Tips:

• Utilize a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary rounds templated checklist with rounding to keep communication and the allotted time on track.
• Train team members on healthcare communication tools like SBAR to ensure that professional updates are relevant and succinct.

3. Ensure Clarity of Roles, Licensure, and Purpose

This crucial aspect of effective rounding applies to the conversation happening at the bedside as well as within the inner workings of the team. Patients need to know who each member of their care team is while rounding is happening. Similarly, staff members must have clarity about their roles and expected contributions.

Tips:

• Although physicians speak first in many structured, templated approaches to interdisciplinary rounds, nursing teams can help effectively introduce and wrap up rounding conversations, helping allay physician fatigue as they round in room after patient room.
• Ensure that rounding checklists and templates have stopgaps for introducing not just patient identification as a safety measure, but the entire team.

4. Commit to Positive Interprofessional Teamwork

Clarity regarding roles and expectations goes a long way to ensuring a positive rounding experience. Yet, the best way to ensure a positive interprofessional experience is by prioritizing communication. This can be done through training sessions that employ specific communication tools, and through expressing the importance of closed-loop communication and promoting a healthy, just working environment.

Tips:

• Prioritize efficiency, potentially adding specific timeframes to checklists or templates in order to strengthen schedule awareness and the regard for each health professional’s time.
• Address conflict immediately, using a framework approach to ensure that resolution occurs quickly and with lasting effect.

5. Use Rounding to Prioritize Person-Centered Care

Whether rounding is done with a multidisciplinary vs. interdisciplinary approach, the goal should always be higher quality care. A person-centered approach boosts the impact and productivity of the clinical team’s relationship with patients, allowing for better communication flow, engagement, and (often) outcomes. Treating patients as people with lives beyond their diagnosis and involving them as meaningful participants within rounding embodies best practice at its fullest.

Tips:

• Add the patient as a crucial rounding participant in your checklist template to reinforce the necessity of their voice and improve staff adherence to bedside rounding.
• Carefully consider the care conversation’s impact before including it within rounds. For example, a new diagnosis may be better shared during a more private meeting with fewer time constraints.

Ready to Revitalize Your Commitment to Person-Centered Care?

With your handy multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary rounds template, your care plan communication is sure to engage patients. Continue optimizing your patient relationships using IntelyCare’s expert-informed facility guides and healthcare management tips.