Communication And Collaboration In Healthcare

Communication in the healthcare field may be a little different for some people. Healthcare requires the communication to have a purpose, and that purpose is revolved around a person’s needs. A patient with good staff communication during

As time goes by, people get infected with new diseases or current prevailing diseases. Consequently, new drugs are produced in an attempt to overcome these diseases, which results in patients with complex health needs. The complexity of the patients’ healthcare therefore needs to be addressed by more than one discipline. Interprofessional collaborative care is a type of health care that involves people from different professions working together and relying on each other to provide effective care to patients. Interprofessional collaborative care is important and predominantly a focus of the health care reform because it improves healthcare outcome for the patients and reduces disagreements between different professions. I was able to experience interprofessional care when my grandma was diagnosed with cancer. The physician and the pharmacist worked together in ensuring that she got the proper medication that would not have any side effects on her. In addition, the physician would call the pharmacy every two weeks to check on my grandma’s progress and to ensure that she had picked up her medications. Both my grandma and I were grateful because we felt that our needs were taken care of appropriately. Moreover, interprofessional health care is important in a curriculum because if helps the students to be better prepared to work as a team. This is achieved by teaching students about their own profession while receiving an understanding of the other professions and the roles they

Nurses play an important role in achieving the competencies of interprofessional collaboration, quality improvement, and human flourishing. Successful interprofessional collaboration requires the willingness to step outside of one’s comfort zone and initiate interactions with other professionals. Nurses must also possess a well-rounded understanding of patient needs in order to know which types of professionals with which to collaborate. Communication skills are

Effective communication among professionals from different disciples is key area to care coordination (Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, 2007) however; Communication involves a variety of strategies and purposes (Kripalani et al, 2007). In an interprofessional collaboration, different professional groups work mutually as a team to develop a positive impact on health care. As said by Zwarenstein, Goldman & Reeves (2009) collaborative working is improved because of an agreement between different professionals through communication. Good communication is vital as It enables health care professionals to build relationships

“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

As a future nurse, I find it very important and beneficial to have been given the opportunity to learn about, and participate in, interprofessional collaboration while still in nursing school. Before starting this course, it never really crossed my mind as to how much I would need to communicate and collaborate with other disciplines within the health care team while caring for my patients. Within the short time I spent with multiple different disciplines in my IPE clinical at Methodist Hospital, I was able to get a glimpse into what their roles and responsibilities were and how that related to and intertwined with the nurse’s roles and responsibilities. Interprofessional collaboration has been defined as “nurses and physicians working together, sharing responsibilities for solving problems, and making decisions to formulate and carry out plans for patient care” (Muller-Juge et al., 2013, p.1). Interprofessional communication and collaboration is extremely important in patient care because proper communication and collaboration between physicians, nurses, social workers, and any other members of the health care team, is imperative to keeping one another informed and, more

The delivery of safe, affordable and quality healthcare to clients is an integral part in today`s health care. In order to provide the aforementioned care; inter-professional (IP) collaboration of the health care members is essential. The need for IP collaboration has been identified by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the federal government, the Department of Health and Human Services. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) has identified the IP collaboration as an essential element of nursing education in the AACN Essential Series (Messer, n.d.). Evidence suggests that the collaboration among health professionals has been associated positively with patient outcomes in the operating room, the emergency

Interprofessional practice is widely researched, and is held in high regard within education and policy; the issue is the lack of evidence of this collaboration being implemented within the health care system and hospitals (Kenny, 2002). Multidisciplinary care allows for multiple professions to work alongside each other, while working towards their own individual goals. Meanwhile, interprofessional practice involves all professionals working together as a team towards one goal, which is the overall health of the patient (Botten, 2012). Kenny (2002) suggests that interprofessional practice is an opportunity to diminish any power barriers, and considers all other professionals roles and responsibilities. This allows different professions to care for a patient based on their education, skills, specialties, and experiences. Botten (2012) proposes that this leads to a number of different perspectives, shared responsibilities, a decrease in medical errors and enhanced staff morale. The concept of different professionals working together is crucial in patient care because as stated previously, not one profession could possibly care for all of the needs of modern patients (Hilton et al., 2002). Research suggests that one reason for not implementing interprofessional practice is the

Working in a team is an important responsibility by understanding each other’s role which may include doctor, nurse, occupational therapist, physiotherapist and many more. Team members divide the work based on their scope practice such as acute care, metal health care, homecare etc. Interprofessional collaboration practice is decision making and communicating between individuals for their patient’s health based on their knowledge and skills. It helps to promote habits, maximizing health resources, leading care to be safer with patient’s satisfaction and Canada’s health care (Kenaszchuk, Reeves, Nicholas, & Zwarenstein, 2010).

According to American Nurses Association (2010) Scope and Standards of Nursing Practice, collaboration is defined as, “a 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; commonality of goals; the mutual safeguarding of the legitimate interest of each party; and the advantages of such a relationship”.(p. 64). Collaboration amongst health care providers is very crucial in providing quality care to patients. Integration of disciplinary teams, improves communication, coordination, and most importantly, the safety and quality of patient care. It provides interaction between team members allowing

Interprofessional education (IPE) is a method used to increase the ability of professionals to engage in a collaborative process. IPE is starting to become more concentrated in the education system due to the composite problems patients and clients are dealing with, within in the healthcare system (Lumague et al., 2006). Evidence suggests that healthcare professionals show negative perceptions and stereotypes of each other and their professions, causing barriers in communication and teamwork, which can directly affect the patient and become a safety issue (Michalec et al., 2013). The practice and education of interprofessionalism has a profusion of pros, although, a few problems can be expected to occur. Interprofessional education provides an abundance of benefits that positively impacts the healthcare field.

Changes in the world have prompted close evaluation of interactions between professionals. To reduce the chances of negative incidents happening in the health care setting, administrators and professionals began to examine how disciplines work together.1 As interest in professional interactions grew, “teamwork” and “collaborative care” and were upheld as recurrent themes needed to ensure comprehensive patient care.1 Standard professional preparation included individual training to acquire knowledge and functioning as an individual within a discipline, but a lack of effective collaboration was becoming a recurrent theme which was starting to be associated with inconsistent service in patient care.2 One report3 from Canada stated, “Changing the way we educate health providers is key to achieving system change and to ensuring that health providers have the necessary knowledge and skill to work effectively in interprofessional teams within the evolving health care system.”3 Because of this, focus began to turn towards collaborative educational training of health care professionals or interprofessional education (IPE) as a potential remedy

Teamwork and communication are very important in providing good quality care, especially in the healthcare field. A team is described as a group of people that works together and cooperatively, between each member of the group to reach a common goal (Sullivan, 2013). For a team to function, communication is essential. A report by McKay and Crippen (2008), as stated by Alfaro-LeFevre, (2013) showed that when collaboration is in place, hospitals can decrease their mortality rate by 41%. When mortality rate is lower, hospitals does not only decreased cost, but it also means that patients are receiving good quality care.

Comparatively, interprofessional education is defined and compared to other styles of education in the article, “Interprofessional learning—the solution to collaborative practice in primary care”, by E. McKinlay and S. Pullon (2007). Also, McKinlay and Pullon (2007) examines results of one interprofessional education program and some “barriers” that are preventing interprofessional education from being a common theme in health care. Analyzing the results and outcomes of one program is necessary to show that interprofessional education does help produce the intended results and areas that might not to be modified (3). The “barriers” that are presented in this article provides other programs thinking about implementing this program to consider

The need to collaborate among other healthcare disciplines becomes more crucial for professional nurses, as the delivery of care to patients becomes more complex. “Quality and safety for patients rely on effective communication among all health team members” (Hood 104.)