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Breaking down the silos: the team approach to evaluating the patient referred for neurological surgery

¹ Consultant in Neurological Surgery, Mayo Clinic and Associate Professor of Anatomy, Neurosurgery and Orthopedics, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, MN, USA
² Consultant in Neurology, Mayo Clinic and Professor of Neurology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, MN, USA

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor A J Windebank, Department of Neurology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, 200 1st, Street SW, Rochester, MN 55901, USA;
windebank.anthony@mayo.edu

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The visit for a patient referred for evaluation by specialists tends to be organised around the convenience of the doctors rather than centred on the needs of the patient. We justify this in terms of efficient use of resources, although this may not always be the case. In an ideal world, all the diagnostic and evaluative resources would be made available to the patients in an integrated way that would enable them to join with their doctors in making an informed decision about treatment. In our own fields of neurology and neurosurgery the patient is generally referred for the individual opinion of the neurologist or neurosurgeon, rather than the evaluation process being centred on the patient. However, we believe that medical care can be improved when patients with problems that may require neurosurgery are evaluated by the neurologist and neurosurgeon—together.

At a few institutions this team approach has been developed . . . [Full text of this article]

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