Interdisciplinary Teaching in Rural Settings to Enhance Multidisciplinary Team Care

The RIPL Effect

Abstract

Collaborative care is the gold standard in effective patient care.1 This is particularly important in the rural context where teams are smaller and there is typically more interaction with colleagues from other professions in the delivery of health care. Rural generalist medicine is shaping up to become the cornerstone of medical care delivery in rural Australia. A rural generalist is described as a “medical practitioner who is trained to meet the specific current and future healthcare needs of Australian rural and remote communities, in a sustainable and cost- effective way by providing both comprehensive general practice and emergency care and required components of other medical specialist care in hospital and/or community settings as part of a rural healthcare team.”2 Such an approach of targeting rural practitioner’s skills to the needs of the community they serve aligns with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) definition of social accountability in medicine.3 Equally important is that rural generalists operate using a multidisciplinary team care approach, drawing on the skills and expertise of clinicians from other professions to provide effective patient- centered care.4