Interdisciplinary Relations In Radiology Health And Social Care Essay

Nowadays the collaboration among health care professionals has become the key to positive patient outcomes. As a rule, each member of the health care team is usually trained with specific knowledge and skills, which allow them to do what they do best. Working together as a team brings specific strengths of each discipline to focus on the care of the patient and supplements any weaknesses of other teammates. Effective interdisciplinary relationships decrease costs and improve patient satisfaction, while improving overall health care worker satisfaction. There are different health care interdisciplinary relationships. They include: radiology, working with the emergency room, or working in a pharmaceutical company. The marketing department needs to collaborate with the development department in order to provide stability.

Radiology is the medical specialty that deals with pictures of the inside of the body through different physical agents, magnetic fields, etc.) And the use of these images is intended for diagnosis and to a lesser extent, for the prognosis and treatment of diseases. Also, there are known generically diagnostic radiology or diagnostic imaging, according to Radiologic Technologists and Technicians (2011). 

Radiology should be distinguished from radiation therapy, which uses no images, but directly uses ionizing radiation (X-rays of higher energy than those used for diagnosis, and other radiation) for the treatment of diseases (for example, stopping or slowing the growth of tumors that are sensitive to radiation.) Radiology can be divided in several different ways: on the one hand, it can be divided according to organ system or body part being studied. Thus, one can speak of many subspecialties, for example, neurological radiology or neuroradiology; head and neck radiology; chest radiology; cardiac radiology; abdominal radiology; gastrointestinal radiology; genitourinary radiology; radiology of the breast; gynecologic radiology; vascular radiology; musculoskeletal radiology, and pediatric radiology. On the other hand, radiology can be divided into three groups according to their main activities:

Nuclear Medicine: generates images by using radioactive tracers that are fixed with different affinity to different types of tissues. It is a branch that is exclusively diagnostic and in some countries constitutes separate medical specialty. 

Diagnostic radiology or diagnostic radiology: it focuses primarily on diagnosing disease by image. 

Interventional radiology: is mainly focused on the treatment of diseases, using minimally invasive surgical procedures guided by imaging techniques. 

The border between diagnostic and interventional radiology is not perfectly defined: diagnostic specialists also tend to perform interventional procedures in their respective area and treatment specialists (interventional radiologists) are responsible for diagnosing peripheral vascular diseases. Today, in many countries, the subspecialty of vascular and interventional radiology is integrated with the rest of radiology at a single specialty, although there is controversy over whether officials should separate specialties. Classically there are used X-rays that were discovered over a century ago by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, German scientist who studied the effects of Crookes tubes on some photographic plates when subjected to the passage of an electric current.

For many years the only form of energy or radiation were used by the X-ray radiology. In the early sixties, people began using the ultrasound or ultrasound equipment, and the ultrasound equipment used to produce images inside the body. Bones and gas are the barriers that impede effective ultrasound and limit its use. An application of X-rays was revolutionary a computed tomography, or CT, which allows three-dimensional scans of all organs of the body by incorporating a rotating X-ray tube a powerful computer that is able to reconstruct the images, according to Radiologic Technologists and Technicians (2011). 

One of the newest techniques is magnetic resonance imaging, whose computers contain powerful devices capable of generating magnetic fields up to more than two tesla (20 000 gauss) in the field of diagnosis and more than three tesla in the field of research. The fields, thus generated, are able to align neatly nuclear magnetic moment of atoms with an odd number of nucleons of the organism being studied. When the magnetic field is down sharply, the moments of the atoms in the body are misaligned, targeting each in a different direction, at random, while emitting electromagnetic radiation in a radio frequency band. This radiation collected and processed by computer, and it is used to reconstruct images from inside the body where greater or lesser intensity of the signal corresponds to the hydrogen atoms of tissues and body water. Recently, it is incorporated into radiology techniques positron emission tomography (PET). This is a technology that uses radioactive isotopes introduced into organic molecules or radiopharmaceuticals that are injected into the patient and then analyzes the radioactive emission of the different tissues in the uptake of radiopharmaceutical present. Usually, there is used a labeled glucose with fluorine-18, so there is greater affinity by tumor or inflammatory lesions. It can be performed by combining CT and PET studies, allowing higher spatial resolution with functional imaging. The medical professional to oversee the radiological examination and interpretation of medical imaging is the radiologist or physician in the case of nuclear medicine. The practitioner is responsible for medical imaging technician is the diagnostic imaging or, in some countries, the Medical Technologist with a major in Imaging and Medical Physics, according to Radiologic Technologists and Technicians (2011).

Working with the emergency room is a prestigious and at the same time hard work that gives people an opportunity to save lives and to build a successful career. “Working in an emergency room (ER) can be one of the most interesting and challenging areas of nursing. It’s a fast-paced environment, and nurses must know how to assess and treat patients of all age groups, from newborns to older adults.”

Skills and time management are essential when working with the emergency room. People have to be true professionals, have to be experienced doctors and nurses and have to be confident in what they are doing, according to Emergency room nurse training (2010).

Working in a pharmaceutical company intends a perspective career and getting indispensable experience. “Some physicians come into the company to practice medicine and look after the health and safety of the employees. These physicians are trained in public health, occupational health and safety, or rehabilitative medicine and are interested in preventing and treating the disorders that people working in businesses or in manufacturing plants develop. And, of course, they’re interested in preventing and treating the diseases that all of us have and understanding their impact on the workplace.”, according to What is it Like to Work for a Pharmaceutical Company? (2001).

In each organization there have to be applied the ways to avoid and resolve conflicts, how to work as a team and collaborate with other departments, and ways to make the process better. Working in the sphere of health care is a very responsible process and everything has to be done correctly. “Doctors within the industry are respected and considered senior, do an interesting job, and work in a rewarding corporate environment. Decision making tends to be more collaborative than in medicine, but important clinical decisions such as those regarding safety are still taken by doctors. Day to day work is meeting orientated, almost exclusively with colleagues from other functional groups rather than groups of doctors. The environment is more comfortable, from the office, to the hours, to the quality of the coffee.”, according to Working for the pharmaceutical industry (2007).

Considering the personal experience with an interdisciplinary relationship, I would like to describe how it worked. Interdisciplinary relationships are very important among people, and there are many issues that have to be solved between people. There are different situations that influence people’s characters and perception of the situation, that is why the only way is to use communication, in order to prevent misunderstanding. Interdisciplinary relationships represent communication and collaboration. “Working on interdisciplinary teams to build the electronic record gave clinicians the opportunity to study the roles that other disciplines play at the organization. With strong support from IS staff, nurses collaborated closely with members of the pharmacy team to design physician order systems that met both groups’ needs for accessing information, and in the process, developed mutual respect for what others bring to the care continuum.”, according to Interdisciplinary relationships (2003). As a fact, interdisciplinary relationships affect my organization, as well as patients and families that use my health care organization.