Safety concerns and multidisciplinary management of the dysphagic patient.

The interdisciplinary health care team is responsible for providing medical care based on a patient-centered model while maintaining professional and ethical standards. However, an emerging body of research suggests that ineffective and inappropriate care, or fatal errors, arise from the lack of productive communication between patients, families, and medical caregivers. This has prompted the evolution of a new health care discipline, patient safety, which became increasingly prominent in the 1990s. The purpose of this article is to bridge the gap between the discipline of patient safety and its relationship to the diagnosis of dysphagia.