Multidisciplinary teams and line management

Abstract

Recent developments in psychiatry have required increased inter-disciplinary collaboration to ensure co-ordination of specialist skills. Simultaneously, changes in management structures of participating disciplines have produced vertically organised systems of management with multiple tiers often referred to as line management. The membership of multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) now comprises individuals at varying levels in management hierarchy and with different abilities to contribute to the decision making process. Managers usually impose attitudes, expectations and obligations on staff working in MDTs which are often major obstacles to effective teamwork by causing ambivalence and opposing loyalties leaving individual workers in invidious positions (Fagin, 1985). This paper reviews current thinking on multidisciplinary teams and present day management structures among disciplines in psychiatry and discusses the practical problems and areas of conflict resulting from their interaction in settings where MDTs are expected to operate.