Interprofessional Education Essay

The purpose of this paper is to bring forth awareness when it comes to patients and medication errors and further educates health care professionals on the importance of communication especially during transition of care. According to Williams and Ashrcoft (2013) “ An estimated median of 19.1 % of total opportunities for error in hospitals.” Although not all medication errors occur during transition it is the time most prevalent for these errors to occur. As per Johnson, Guirguis, and Grace (2015) “An estimated 60% of all medication errors occur during transition of care. The National Transitions of Care Coalition defines a transition of care as the movement of patients between healthcare locations, providers, or different levels of care within the same location as their conditions and care needs change, [and] frequently involves multiple persons, including the patient, the family member or other caregiver(s), nurse(s), social worker(s), case manager(s), pharmacist(s), physician(s), and other providers.”

The main objective of healthcare professionals is to provide the best quality of patient care and the highest level of patient safety. To achieve that objective, there are many organizations that help improve the quality of care. One of the best examples is the Joint Commission. Unfortunately, the healthcare system is not free from total risks. In healthcare activities, there are possible errors, mistakes, near miss and adverse events. All of those negative events are preventable. But, it is clear that errors caused in healthcare result in thousands of deaths in the United States.

Interprofessional Education, IPE event took place on July 22nd, 2016. The purpose of IPE is for us to learn how to work together as a health care team effectively collaborating with other health care members. In order to do so, each individual needed to understand not only his or her role and responsibility of a given role but also other team members’ roles and responsibilities. In our event, it was Interprofessional Health care Team Simulation with roles of a registered practical nurse and a Food Service supervisor, and a registered social worker and a personal support worker and a patient and her family member. We were given the scenario with the patient, Mrs. Johnston, 93 years old resident of a nursing home. My role was a RPN. The situation given was that we were asked by the patient’s family member to have a meeting with the health care team since her family member was concerned about her declining health status accompanied by her body weight loss.

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.

Those who are admitted to hospitals nowadays either through the emergency department or elective admission usually have multiple and complex health conditions and classically require more than one health professional to address these needs. In today’s hospital settings interprofessional collaboration is being promoted as a holistic means of providing patient centred care and plays an extremely important role in healthcare. It is said to improve the delivery of healthcare by reducing morbidity and mortality by decreasing wait times, improving chronic disease management and promoting patient safety (World Health Organisation, 2010).

Interprofessional Communication: Communicate with patients, families, communities, and other health professionals in a responsive and responsible manner that supports a team approach to health maintenance and the treatment of disease.

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

According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, To Err Is Human, the majority of medical errors result from faulty systems and processes, not individuals (Hughes, 2008). However, due to processes that are inefficient and variable, multiple health insurance, differences in provider education and experience, and other factors that contribute to the complexity of health care the IOM has put together six aims of health care that is effective, safe, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable (Hughes, 2008).

An imperative element of Interprofessional practice is communication, that not only between patients, but also between healthcare colleagues. Communication restricts, controls and determines the timing and amount of practitioner intervention– making it essential that consistent interaction between other healthcare professionals occurs to prevent ill management of the patient. A journal article titled “Role understanding and effective communication as core competencies for collaborative practice” written by Suter et al. in 2009 describes team meetings and shared patient data as two simple procedures that involve and prepare members to meticulously care for their patients, referencing also Interprofessional worker’s appreciation for any disposition to learn, adapt and improve professionally and clinically during care. The process of referrals also plays a large part in communication.

Medical errors are avoidable mistakes in the health care. These errors can take place in any type of health care institution. Medical errors can happen during medical tests and diagnosis, administration of medications, during surgery, and even lab reports, such as the mixing of two patients’ blood samples. These errors are usually caused by the lack of communication between doctors, nurses and other staff. A medical error could cause a severe consequence to the patient in cases consisting of severe injuries or cause/effect any health conditions, and even death. According to recent studies medical errors are not the third leading cause of death in the United States. (Walerius. 2016)

From this class I understood that Interprofessional Education (IPE) is when two or more profession learn from, with and about each other. This collaboration is important in order to fulfill the patients’ needs that are becoming more complex, multi-faced and challenging day by day. It is also clear to me that no single profession in healthcare can adequately address all the demands of patients. Therefore, partnership between teams is required to provide a safe, timely, effective and equitable patient care. To have a smooth collaboration, it is necessary to learn from each other’s specializations, strength and experiences. In the real world, healthcare is an interdisciplinary team effort to provide the best possible service to a patient based on evidence based practices. Considering this, I had the

Aside from the fact that inter-professional education has recorded commendable success among all stakeholders, as evidently reported in Cochrane reviews in which its effectiveness has shown tremendous positive improvement of professional practice and health care outcomes on the service users Inter-professional education Reeves et al. [2008]. In addition to the success and potential, it is believed that IPE has the potential to improve members of inter-professional health workers' clinical and medical knowledge and clinical skills. In spite of the recorded successes and potential to improve clinical and practice knowledge in inter-professional health settings, it is beginning to be noticed that these successes are not without their attendant

Mistakes and medical error is reputed to be one of the leading causes of death in a patient care setting. Indeed, if it was to be ranked among other diseases as cases of death, it would rank third. It has been further illustrated that the best way of mitigating medical errors and the presence of mistakes in care delivery lies in effective communication and learning from mistakes committed. For this reason, it is clear that the policy of honesty reign paramount as a key attribute that would elicit tangible improvement. Complete honesty ensures that individuals in the medical setting and patient care are able to communicate effectively and in the process elicit an element of exchange and learning. In cases where such

In today's modern world with plenty of technology, it is hard to believe that we cannot figure out how to reduce Medical errors. The issue of medical error is not new in health care organizations. It has been in spot light since 1990's, when government did research on sudden increase in number of death in the hospitals. According to Lester, H., & Tritter, J. (2001), "Medical error is an actual or potential serious lapse in the standard of care provided to a patient, or harm caused to a patient through the performance of a health service or health care professional." Medical errors

Reporting errors can strengthen the processes of care and also enhance the quality of care. To effectively avoid further errors that can cause harm to patients, improvements must be made on the incidents or events reported in reporting system. Reporting errors can help the organizations better understand what happened, identify the factors that cause the occurrence of errors or incidents, determine its frequency and predict whether it could happen again and find an intervention to prevent or to