Inter professional collaboration: the future of pediatric dental practice

Inter- professional collaboration is defined as "when multiple health workers from different professional backgrounds work together with patients, families, caregivers, and communities to deliver the highest quality of care,with the triple aim of improving patient experience and satisfaction, improving the health of the population, and reducing costs.1 However, IPC is where health care is still not a reality right now and IPC is the exception, not the rule. It is the need of the hour for each of the health professions to shift its focus toward collaboration, partnerships, and sharing, rather than operate in silos. pediatric dentistry is one such domain of health sciences which needs intricate and interdependent treatment planning and delivery as many specialties come under this branch and unequivocally children in growing age needs monitoring by different specialists and an orchestral confluence of treatment that cascades in a flawless and seamless way,as any wrong doing in this age can spoil the masticatory as wellas complete general health including the psychological aftermath,it is of great importance asin casepatients are "handed off" with each transition, there is increasing risk for error to the patient with each handoff so with efficient transfer of essential information; IPC can mitigate some of the risk associated with these transitions. However there are several challenges that include traditional culture of healthcare training and practice to work in silos, Professionals are not used to working collaboratively across disciplines; hence there is little exposure to each other's role and perspective, this fosters miscommunication, mistrust, conflict, and a lack of coordinated care. 2Also physicians historically have been autonomous and dominant of other health professions, rather than collaborative. Lastly patients themselves have traditionally not been a part of the decision making related to their care. With the greater challenge that is resistance to change, as health professionals may be reluctant to adopt an IPC culture. Despite all these the benefits of IPC stands tall so it is time to take a call. In this paper we showcase inter- professional case-centered collaborative practice focusing onpediatric population.It is all about how we can collaborate inter-professionally? What opportunities exist to collaborate inter -professionally? What disciplines outside of ourspecialtycould you collaborate with? What cases in pediatric dentistry comes under whom could you collaborate with? Examplesare provided to assist in showing the conditions for collaborative teamwork to develop in an institutional and hospital setting, this series will emphasize why inter - professional collaboration (IPC) is important, and it will provide concrete examples of how to make IPC work in pediatric multiple settings.