Effective healthcare is vital to prevent illnesses and injuries, to provide treatments and rehabilitation from illnesses and injuries, and to enhance physical, psychological, and social health and well-being. Twenty-first-century healthcare has become a "team sport" that requires multidisciplinary teams with diverse knowledge, skills, abilities, perspectives, and wisdom. Multidisciplinary healthcare teams include physicians, nurses, dentists, psychologists, physical and occupational therapists, and other healthcare practitioners; healthcare researchers, scholars, and educators; healthcare administrators and policymakers; as well as patients and patients' significant others. This volume includes chapters that address multidisciplinary teams from many different professional, scholarly, and experiential perspectives of experts around the globe. The chapters are written by scholars, practitioners, and educators from Canada, Grenada, Iran, Nigeria, Norway, Qatar, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States. It is the goal of this volume to increase understanding of what factors improve and detract from effective multidisciplinary teamwork in healthcare in order to improve its application and enhance the well-being of patients, practitioners, and all members of healthcare teams. Topics addressed in this volume include teams and team members, the importance and benefits of teamwork in healthcare, teamwork skills, and enablers, creating and optimizing healthcare teams, team challenges, and educating healthcare professionals for multidisciplinary teams. Each chapter stands alone to make meaningful contributions regarding multidisciplinary teamwork in healthcare. Together, the chapters in this volume provide a valuable and thoughtful discussion of multidisciplinary teams in healthcare along with a comprehensive list of references for readers who want to dig deeper.
