Collaborative Practice Essay

1.1 – it is important for me to continually improving my knowledge, and ensure that I am aware of, and follow, the current health & social care standards, legislation, and guidelines for good practice. Learning new skills and refreshing training enables me to progress, and achieve within my career and working practices.

The importance of continually providing knowledge and practice is to keep up with the constant changes that are happening all the time. Globalisation and technology have made changes in health and social care at a rapid rate. There has been a significant change in the way that care is being experienced and there are higher expectations in the quality of care. A more personal approach is required and accessibility to training resources ensures that we can all be the best in our job roles and in line with legal requirements. There are opportunities available now, thanks to technology advancements, to share responsibilities across the board, we have better access to other partnerships,

profession, communities, and in society” (para. 5). I want to continue to broaden my knowledge over the life of my career. I also believe in using this knowledge to positively impact others in all aspects of healthcare.

Another important aspect of healthcare is effective interprofessional practice. This allows practitioners from different disciplines to work together to provide the best care for patients. There are four areas of competency in interprofessional collaborative practice. They are values/ethics, roles/responsibilities, interprofessional communication, and teams/teamwork (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2011). Each of these areas contribute to skilled interprofessional

Service improvement is arguably one of the most important challenges facing the National Health Service (NHS) today, as both patients and service users search for a ‘good quality’ service, and expect services to be both efficient and effectual. All staff within the health service need to be educated and competent in their roles, in order to be able to offer a service that is beneficial to the patients that make use of it.

“All health care disciplines share a common and primary commitment to serving the patient and working toward the ideal of health for all.” (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2014, p. 1) There are many different professional members in the healthcare system. Each of them, have a specific specialty and responsibility to the patient and play an important role in the patient’s overall plan of care. “The scope of health care mandates that health professionals work collaboratively and with other related disciplines. Collaboration emanates from an understanding and appreciation of the roles and contributions that each discipline brings to the care delivery experience.” (American Association of Colleges of

While historically these teams were spearheaded by phyiscians, team leaders are now based on team objectives instead of a member’s professional status (Porter-O Grady, 2013). These changes have resulted in professional nurses commonly assuming inpte-rprofessional team leader roles (Porter-O Grady, 2013). As inter-professional team leaders, nurses must have knowledge of group dynamics, team characteristics, and also have the skills necessary to effectively manage teams (Porter-O Grady, 2013). According to Porter-O Grady, “facilitation, coordination, and intergration of care” are inheret to the nursing profession and are essential effective nursing practice (2013, p.__ ). These attributes are equally important when leading inter-professional teams because nurses serve as great mediators between patients, team members, and the healthcare organization (Porter-O Grady,

This is the way nurses come together with healthcare consumer, family, and others in the conduct of nursing practices. Collaboration is professional healthcare partnership grounded in a reciprocal and respectful recognition and acceptance of: each partner’s unique expertise, power, and sphere of influence and responsibilities; the commonality of goals; the mutual safeguarding of the legitimate interest of each party; and the advantages of such a relationship. (Spring, 2010). Nursing students should be ready to collaborate with their patients and their families at times in every situation in order to come out with a positive outcome while helping the patients. This is attained by sharing the knowledge we have learned in class combined with what the patient says (subjectives) orthe situation you are. When nurses collaborate together and understand one another it will be easier for them to take care of the patients and they will manage to offer a high quality care possible.

In order to fully explore the nature of team work in healthcare it is importance to first look at what defines a team.A team can be defined as two or more people with specific roles working together to achieve a common purpose(Kalisch & Begeny, 2005). For

“To become a high-performing team the team must be competent at goal setting, making assignments and ensuring that team members have the skills to complete them, consensus decision making, setting high standards, holding people accountable, and running effective meetings” (Dyer, Dyer, & Dyer, 2007, p. 74). In the article, “Professionals’ Views on Interprofessional Stroke Team Functioning” Jane Cramm & Anna Nieboer (2011) seek to explain that interprofessional teamwork is considered the core component of integrated care, a complex activity involving many different health care providers that demands effective team functioning (p. 1-2). And in the article, “The Role of Oncologists in Multidisciplinary Cancer Teams in the UK: An Untapped

The philosophy we value open, two-way communication, to promote a listening and learning culture can be exemplified through inter-professional working. This relates to my own area of practice as DN’s work as part of a multidisciplinary team (See Appendix 1). Inter-professional working is key within the community setting as it enables patient’s to be safely cared for with all their clinical nursing needs met. Inter-professional working is defined as occasions when two or more occupations learn with, from and about each other to develop relationships providing high standards of care and improves collaboration (CAIPE, 2002). Inter-professional working increases knowledge of different roles, giving an understanding of the interpersonal skills needed

Interprofessional practice is a collaborative practice where multiple health professionals work together in health services to provide comprehensive services to their patients, families and communities to get a more effective result by improving the quality of work. The collaborative practise is basically used by the nursing team or other health care workers who are the member of interprofessional team. “A call for interprofessional team and collaborative practice development has been sounded across Canada because this model is viewed as the way to ensure that all professionals and providers can practice to the full potential of their role and competencies” (Potter, 2014). Interprofessional collaborative practice is a way to ensure that human health resources are used properly which help to decrease the duration time for achieving a quality care.

Teamwork in nursing is a little different that the teamwork of an actual team. In nursing, there is an ‘I’ in team, except here the ‘I’ stands for independent (QSEN Institute, 2015). Nurses and hospital faculty work their independent jobs, but communicate in order to give the patient the best care possible. Once again as stated before by Berman, the QSEN Institute believes that knowing your team 's strengths and weaknesses will also help you to be able to provide the best care possible.

During the team formation, a number of challenges manifested. Firstly, it was the fact that there were nurses from other units. Hence, there were fears that they may not be well informed with procedures undertaken in our unit. However, this challenged was effectively addressed by assigning the nurses from other units a nurse from our unit to help her during the emergency period.

Teams working in a hospital or other healthcare setting may consist of several physicians, nurses, medical assistants, referral coordinators, pharmacists, therapists, and students among others. Such large teams can provide comprehensive care for complex and chronic illnesses, but when they fail to work well together, they