Annali di igiene : medicina preventiva e di comunità
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Because of a continued increase of complex patients and the development of many areas of sub-specialities in medicine, the use and quality of interdisciplinary communication has been found to be lacking, especially between hospital and primary care physicians, causing a significant gap in the documentation, coverage and care of individual patients. The study focuses on state of the art interdisciplinary communication, with consideration given to current used tools and priorities. An ad hoc questionnaire surveyed 118 physicians about their profession, the types of patients, the frequency of complex cases, the tools used to communicate with each patient and how the physicians rated these tools. ⋯ Many Doctors (71%) value the actual interdisciplinary communication of low quality, despite the fact that it is considered to have a significant influence on the quality of health care. New tools and methods are needed. For example, dedicated standards of multidisciplinary and multi-professional Continuing Medical Education (CME), as well as the use of computer tools allowing for shared clinical records.