Teamwork is bit like the motherhood and apple pie of medicine. It is unquestionably A Good Thing. Yet, like motherhood, there’s no instruction book, and like apple pie, it’s rarely as good in real life as it looks like on the packet.
We certainly need teamwork. Even for a patient with just one chronic disease, the requirements for managing and monitoring often fall outside any individuals mix of skills, and always fall beyond the time we have available. Now that multimorbidity is the most common chronic condition.1 teamwork in health care is even more essential.
Being a patient with a chronic disease is hard work; not just having the disease …