The Interprofessional Realms Of Health Care

The issue of interprofessional working is currently one of key importance in the field of health and social care (Moyneux, 2001). Using the 6 stages of Gibb’s Reflective cycle (1988) I am going to demonstrate my understanding and explore the importance of interprofessional working as well as discuss barriers and facilitators for team working. A healthcare system that supports effective teamwork can improve the quality of patient care, enhance patient safety and reduce workloads that cause burnout among healthcare professionals (Oandasan, 2006). The 6 stages of Gibb’s cycle include description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action planning for future practice. I am going to reflect on the preparation work which was carried out each week for the group summative presentation and the importance of communication within the group.

In this assignment I will be critiquing a peer reviewed research article which explores an aspect of interprofessional practice. I will reflect on my practice and identify how the research discussed with in the article impacts and challenges my thinking and approach.

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

The National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standard 2 Partnering with Consumers requires all health professionals to provide consumer-centred care and to design the care in partnership with the patient and the family (Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in health Care, 2012). The NSQHS Standards (2012) identified patient and family-centred care and engagement as one of the national priorities. As such, in order to improve patients’ safety outcomes and reduce hospital acquired conditions and readmissions and provide client centred services, the IPE recognized the need for effective interprofessional teams to collaborate and engage patients and families by implementing IPE core structures and processes (Brewer & Jones, 2013). The Curtin University’s ICF encompasses five interprofessional capabilities: “reflection, communication, team function, conflict resolution, and role clarification” (Brewer & Jones, 2013, p. e47). The purpose of ICF is to guide and assist health care students for collaborative practice to deliver safe and high quality care, and client-centred care (Curtin University, 2011). Therefore, health science students are expected to be competent in all skills and meet the criteria outlined in Curtin University’ ICF.

Interprofessional practice for the professional nurse can be defined as collaboration and shared decision making with other health care professionals to improve care and provide safe outcomes for patients. Since nurse are central to the care of the patient, they are often viewed as the communicator and the coordinator of the patient’s care (Burzotta & Nobel, 2011). Nurses have a unique opportunity as a interprofessional team member given their scope of knowledge about the patient. However, nurses struggle with role-identify when a part of an interprofessional team. The work of nurses do is often viewed as non-professional and more task driven by

“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

Collaborative practice (Sadler 2004) is at the forefront of health and social care training. For me, like many nursing students, the first steps in collaborative practice were the IPL (interprofessional learning) modules at university. This has been described as two or more professions being taught together as away of cultivating collaborative practice (Caipe. 2010). These modules consisted of student nurses studying different fields, OT’s, radiographers and midwifes. This was the first opportunity I had to meet other professions, who as in any project are the ones who collaborate not the institutions (UKCR 2007). Since then all the IPL modules I have completed have been with adult nursing

In my NUR-301 Class, I had the opportunity to practice on Interprofessional Education. Our nursing student team was partnered with first year pharmacy school students to learn about each other professions and to study on how we could work in a team of healthcare professionals to attain a common goal. As this was my first time experience to meet other students from a different department of Notre Dame of Maryland University, I was not sure what to expect from our discussions. Even if I have some experiences working both in hospitals and in a pharmacy, I was no fully aware of the responsibilities of a pharmacist directly to the patient or to the healthcare field specialists.

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.

There is an increasing amount of research centring on health care student experiences of facing the death of a patient, however, substantial gaps have been identified with regards to exploring healthcare professions experiences of death as a group. It has been acknowledged that most of the research on this topic focuses on a singular profession, nevertheless, with a significant increase in the emphasis of the importance of interdisciplinary working, particularly within the healthcare sector, it has been established that looking at the experiences of health care professions synergistically would be hugely beneficial in establishing key themes throughout the different professions.

“Interprofessional working involves complex interactions between two or more members of different professional disciplines. It is a collaborative venture in which those involved share the common purpose of developing mutually negotiated goals achieved through agreed plans which are monitored and evaluated according to agreed procedures. This requires the pooling of knowledge and expertise to facilitate joint decision making based upon shared professional viewpoints” (Barrett, Sellman & Thomas, 2005, p18). How individuals collaborate and work towards a common goal for the benefit of the patient is essential for a swift recovery.

In this essay I will concentrate on inter-professional collaboration which is cornerstone for providing better care to patients. I will try to examine some benefits and opportunities, while identifying the barriers and issues to effective collaborative work between employees. Throughout my essay I will be using LEARN format for better reflection on my clinical practice, my thoughts and feeling. As a nursing student in Early Identification team which is focused on maternal and children’s health, I will discuss my experience as being a part of this team.

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.

In modern society, the need for professionals to provide health care that is both educated and effective is ever growing. Whilst healthcare providers are knowledgeable and well informed in their own fields, patients may present issues that require the intellect of another profession. It is for this reason that healthcare is often provided by a team of different experts, such as nurses and midwives, known collaboratively as inter-professional practice. The term inter-professional practice refers to multidisciplinary care that occurs when healthcare workers from a range of qualified backgrounds work together to provide comprehensive services that address the patient’s needs to ensure the highest quality of care is given.

In conclusion, this class has changed my perspective about working in a group. Since my prior experience with groups was so unsettling, I believed that all groups were going to be the same. However, this class has made it possible to believe that there are groups that respect and take into consideration other members’