Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Teams

All suspected victims of child maltreatment deserve a medical evaluation performed by a team with expertise in this area.

These children and their families also benefit from an interdisciplinary as well as a multidisciplinary approach to their care. Multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) and interdisciplinary teams (IDTs) are composed of two or more members addressing the same overarching issue yet have different fields of expertise. The primary difference between the two is that in MDTs each member of the team focuses on their own goals from their discipline’s perspective; their work is done independently, although there are formal interactions between various members of the team. IDTs concentrate on a single, shared goal; the members work independently in the same setting and interact both formally and informally.