Encouraging Physician-Attorney Collaboration through More Explicit Professional Standards

In this age of multi-layered global problem solving, the skill of working with other disciplines is a necessary tool for any professional. Societal ills can no longer be solved by narrow approaches learned in graduate training but call for interdisciplinary collaboration. Effective collaboration of this nature requires the professions to understand the differences in professional cultures and to bridge the communication gap caused by these differences. Legal and medical training offer useful, but often conflicting, approaches to problem solving, thus, potentially impeding our abilities to understand and communicate with others regarding a shared issue or problem. Though each profession has created standards that may hint at the further collaboration of the professions, we believe the standards do not go far enough. To provide context for our position, the first section of this essay offers a theoretical perspective on fundamental components to interdisciplinary collaboration. Section II describes the current support for collaborative skills in each profession\u27s operational standards, and suggests alterations and additions to lend further support to interdisciplinary problem solving