Integration Of Collaborative Practice Within Healthcare

“Errors in communication give rise to substantial clinical morbidity and mortality (Riesenberg, Leitzsch, & Cunningham, 2010).” As a result, the Joint Commission has identified effective communication as one of its National Patient Safety Goals (Dunsford, 2009).

Interdepartmental communication and medical errors have both been proven as causes of harm to patients in health care settings. When there are gaps in communications between nurses changing shifts or patient transitions from one department to another, medical errors can occur and cause harm to patients. Even though there has been improvement in recognition of these problems and actions taken to reduce communication gaps and medical errors, there still needs to be more work, especially in individual facilities.

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

On many occasions, I have seen situations in which effective communication involving the professional healthcare team played a vital role in the positive outcome of patient care. On the other hand, there have been miscommunication between the healthcare team resulting in situations that could have been tragic to the patient.

I believe that communication is the main reason problems occur in health care. It is crucial that the health care team works together as a team and communicates any issues or concerns throughout the process of patient care. No matter how many processes are put into place or how many checklists are followed, mistakes are going to be made unless proper communication occurs. Unfortunately, these mistakes are usually at the cost of safe patient care. According to Edwards (2008), “every

Health care professionals are required to provide a high level quality of care whilst at the same time being cost effective in a constantly evolving world (Gilbert and Bainbridge, 2011 DoH, 2010a). Interprofessional education (IPE), in which two or more professionals can learn from, with and about each other, is just one component in the push for excellent care (CAIPE 2002). Both interprofessional education and interprofessional working are reinforced by policy and also the lessons learned from historical mistakes due to lack of collaboration in the past (DoH 2010b, DoH and Home Office and DES, 2003).

According to Barry (2014), the Joint Commission has acknowledged the severity of complications associated with communication mistakes, for as much as 70% of adverse medical events, 75% of which lead to patient death, are a result of communication breakdowns. Barry (2014) also states that instances of miscommunication cause over two-thirds of adverse effects among patients. As noted by Malekzadeh, Mazluom, Etezadi, and Alireza (2013), as much as 69% of medical errors are preventable in nature and the fact that these issues still plague the field of healthcare in the 21st century is quite perplexing. Therefore, it is the goal of this charter to identify means and ways in which hand-off discrepancies may be minimized and further eliminated, by implementing a tool that will drastically decrease the percentage of handoff errors resulting from a breakdown of communication.

A new, advanced, and complicated treatments seem to be introduced every day. Due to this changes, communication among healthcare team is important to deliver update care. Luckily, the constantly changing technology is also making communication easier. Electronic Health Records (EHR) is a prime example. A thorough progress note can communicate plans effectively. Getting inter-disciplinary and intra-disciplinary physical together for a brief discussion (like “huddles") or Interdisciplinary rounds are effective strategies (Rose, 2011; Turner, 2012). According to

Communication plays a vital role in the healthcare setting, as the relationship with the healthcare professional sets the tone of the care experience and has a powerful impact on patient satisfaction. It is “the shared process in which messages are sent and received between two or more people which are made up of a sender, receiver, and message in a particular context” (cite, date). This essay highlights the importance of, and some common barriers to, effective communication in the healthcare setting. It involves many interpersonal skills such as effective observation, questioning and listening, giving feedback, recognizing and removing barriers.

With the introduction of the SBAR tool, it is critical that leaders as well as all members of the health team demonstrate effective communication skill. As a result of leadership and communication, there are rules and processes according to (ACOG, 2012) there a process for guiding the handoff process includes; interactive communications, limited interruptions, a process for verification and an opportunity to review any relevant historical data. According to (ACOG, 2012), Properly executed hand-offs are interactive and include the opportunity for questions and answers. It continued by saying that every important aspect of the patient's condition and circumstances must be accurately communicated and acknowledged from one party to the other for a safe and effective handoff to occur. Communication at the time of handoff should result in a clear understanding by each team member. Patient handoff report and clinical communication can be improved to promote high quality medical and nursing care. Hand off reports are the most common type of communication between nurses. Ineffective hand offs can have negative consequences on a client's health. There can be delay in care if the information received is not clear and concise. The wrong type of treatment and a risk for inadequate care may also occur. Effective and efficient communication during hand offs in the clinical setting not only increased client satisfaction and outcomes, but created an environment that promoted staff fulfillment as well. A nurse’s primary concern is the safety of patients. Effective communication is a necessary tool in minimizing client harm and maximizing quality of

The World Health Organization has described interprofessional education and collaborative practice in the following “Interprofessional education occurs when students from two or more professions learn about, from and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes. Interprofessional education is a necessary step in preparing a ‘collaborative practice-ready’ health workforce that is better prepared to respond to local health needs.” 1 A question proposed is “why is interprofessional education important?” and an answer to this can be found within the WHO’s description of interprofessional education, in order to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes. If interprofessional education improves health outcomes then that is a definite reason that it is important, for health care professionals one of the most important responsibilities is to improve health outcomes, which is only slightly less important than “do no harm” in my eyes. A cornerstone of interprofesssional education is communication. I am going to propose a situation where there is no communication between health care professionals. A mother brings a prescription for her 3 month old daughter to a pharmacy, the prescription reads “Amoxicillin 400mg/5ml suspension Give 10ml by mouth three times daily” the pharmacist at this point has two options: 1) fill the prescription as is and assume the Dr. is correct (even though the facility software says the dose is too high) 2)

Leonard et al (as cited by World Health Organisation, 2009) reports that breakdowns in communication are the primary causes of inadvertent patient harm. In terms of system or process, communication is a general term that refers to the transmission of information from one entity to another (Fryer, 2013). In health care, communication is a key component to ensure patient safety. Pezzolesi et al (2013) highlights that the impact of a sub-optimal clinical handover can have serious consequences for both staff and patients. The impact for patients can mean an unclear diagnosis, delay or altered treatment plan and recurrent medication errors. The impact on staff can include; feeling emotionally distressed, feeling powerless as a result of clinical uncertainity as a result of clear instructions of treatment plans. This highlights the importance of an optimal handover in order to ensure patient safety and continuity of care. In 2008 an analysis of 2455 sentinel incidences were reported to the Joint Commission for Hospital Accreditation in the USA uncovered that the 70%

Communication is the leading factor in heath care errors (book). (Treas & Wilkinson Book p463) defines communication as “a dynamic, reciprocal process of sending and receiving messages. The messages may be verbal, non-verbal,

Effective communication dramatically enhances the success of health care teams. Effective communication presents many positive implications for health care teams, including enhanced patient and team morale (O’Daniel & Rosenstein, 2008, p. 273). Despite the positives of effective communication many health care teams are still presented with constant communication breakdown which can lead to detrimental outcomes for the patient and the team (Costa & Lusk, 2017, p. 129). Communication breakdown will often undermine the success of health care teams. For the purpose of this essay multidisciplinary health care teams will be the focus as they are heavily dependent upon communication between all individual team members.

There are multiple different ways to have effective communication in health care facilities, it is just taking the time to do it that tends to be the hardest part. By taking the time to communicate properly with those around you that are caring for the same patient, it could ultimately be the difference between life and death. Enforcing policies to make sure all health care personnel are effectively communicating by checklists, dry-erase boards, providing monthly staff meetings, briefings, debriefings, and using the SBAR will decrease the number of medical and/or surgical errors