Examining Variables Related to Successful Collaboration on the Hospice Team‪.‬

Social workers have a long tradition of collaborative practice with other professionals. Interdisciplinary teams in health care originated with Richard Cabot, a well-known physician, in the early 1900s. Working for Massachusetts General Hospital, he proposed the idea of teamwork, suggesting that the social worker, doctor, and educator work together on patient issues (Cabot, 1929). For the better part of a century, input from the social worker has been viewed as helping the physician gain a broader perspective on patient care (Baldwin, 2000). Health care teams, consisting of different professionals combining resources to deliver care to a specific population (Rubin & Beckhard, 1972), manifest in unique ways depending on the delivery system and the philosophy of the particular setting. In some settings teams are simply groups of various practitioners coming together to "report" on what they are each planning with a specific patient, working side by side but not necessarily together (Lee, 1980). Other teams choose to work together and discover that it requires great effort and investment. Interdisciplinary collaboration is defined here as an interpersonal process leading to attainment of specific goals that are not achievable by one team member alone (Bruner, 1991). This definition focuses on the synergy, which emerges from collaboration, identifying it as an active, ongoing, productive process.