Surgical multidisciplinarity for precision medicine: the challenge for the future

Multidisciplinary care has been shown to improve patient outcomes, and interprofessional collaboration has been shown to improve one's medical knowledge. Multidisciplinary interventions in the field of surgery are designed to address a specific problem occurring in a particular patient population and/or within the context of an individual hospital system. The importance of multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity at all levels, including clinical oncology, craniofacial trauma, and brain abscess caused by dental peri-implantitis, is well established. The challenge for future research is to further develop and validate medical team performance assessment instruments; this will help improve medical and surgical team training efforts and aid the design of clinical work systems supporting effective teamwork and safe patient care.