Multidisciplinary Team Reflection

For the first week, what I mainly did was shadowing the different staff to observe the different aspects of medical social work. For example, Phyllis, who is my supervisor, specialized in renal care while Scarlet, another staff, specialized in the A&E department. Even though it was a whole week of orientation, both Rophe and I were exposed to different events during the different days. On Tuesday, we went for a panel discussion about the different Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) that are part of the multidisciplinary team, alongside the doctors, in a hospital setting. The panel discussion also included through a discussion regarding the healthcare system in Singapore, where some of the questions were about the ideal public healthcare, keeping

As much as I would have wanted to prioritize a certain issue above the rest, all three issues have a certain risk attached to them if they were not attended to in time. I then realized how important working in a multidisciplinary team was, as it meant that the different people in the team had certain strengths and support that may help in different types of crises. It also meant that decision-making could be done as a team whenever extremely important decisions had to be made. However, balancing their inputs and opinions while having different useful strengths can mean that working in a multidisciplinary team can be a double-edged sword.

As I recalled during lecture, accommodation issues could be considered the most important as the client and the people living with her would have nowhere else to go. Even though the risk of suicide was extremely important, it would only be an emergency issue when the client displays a high risk for suicide, which can be assessed.

One point that the social worker brought up resonated with me, which

Being hard on them may cause a strain in the relationship of us and the client, but we would always think of their best interests over anything. To me, social workers have the task to befriend the client and their family in order to build a good rapport, but that shouldn’t distract us from getting to the bottom of helping client with the issue(s) that they may be struggling with. To me, what ultimately matters to a social worker is the client’s well-being – if they really don’t want something even if we emphasized on the benefits of it, we should not force the solution down the client’s