Interprofessional Collaboration in Healthcare

Interprofessional Collaboration in Healthcare

A chemist who works in a laboratory, an electrical engineer, a soccer player all share one thing-they work in a team. To construct a house, win a major tournament, or run a crucial experiment, each of the experts depend on others to strengthen their endeavors and achieve their goals. By definition, healthcare is a multi-disciplinary profession where nurses, doctors, as well as other health professionals from various specialties work together, communicate frequently, and above all, share resources. Teams in the healthcare industry are often composed of different experts-referred to as healthcare cadres-each with specific knowledge as well as responsibilities. The multi-disciplinary groups are formed to solve different health issues. A success health team strives to comprehend the situation of the patient, ask questions regarding the problem, make assessments, conduct discussions, and finally provide a recommendation. In the healthcare field, interprofessional collaboration is where different healthcare workers from various specialties come together and work with families, patients, communities, and caregivers (carers) to provide the best care. Further, interprofessional collaboration is founded on the idea that, when healthcare providers regard each other’s’ viewpoint, which also includes the perspective of the patients, they are capable of delivering quality care.

Benefits of Interprofessional Collaboration

The healthcare industry is currently headed toward the direction of interprofessional collaboration. The triple objective of enhancing the satisfaction and experience of patients, improve the population’s health, as well as minimization of costs is not achievable without interprofessional collaboration. Interprofessional collaboration is beneficial to several parties, namely: the staff members of the interprofessional teams, the patients, and finally, the healthcare organization. For the staff members of the interprofessional groups, the relationship with other disciplines increases, and preventable errors are reduced, and the workloads are also reduced since there is no duplication of efforts, which ultimately results in increased knowledge. For the patients, the quality of healthcare outcomes is significantly improved. Finally, for the healthcare organization, the healthcare costs are reduced. These costs can include malpractice lawsuits, among other things.

Characteristics of A Highly Effective Interprofessional Team

A highly effective interprofessional team shares several aspects. For instance, a good team needs to have excellent communication. Primarily, communication implies an intra-team communication and includes team members having the feeling that they can listen and speak out in the context of a team, the ability to discuss and resolve issues in a group. Also, understanding or respecting of roles is a vital characteristic of an effective interprofessional team (Nancarrow, Booth, Ariss, Smith, Enderby & Roots, 2013). In a team that exhibits such a feature, members are aware of the boundaries and limitations of every role; and understand how those roles can impact patient outcomes. Professionals in an effective team are also mindful of how their roles perfectly fit in the team as well as how the roles differ from those of other members. Also, an effective team should have an appropriate mix of skill sets (Nancarrow et al., 2013). A skill mix implies the breadth and combination of staff or team members, experience, professions, individual attributes, and personalities. Effective teams value diversity and need input from various people who bring with them qualities and complementary expertise. A clear vision is another critical characteristic of an effective interprofessional team. A crisp vision, roles as well purpose are essential in steering the team towards a specific direction.

Further, effective interprofessional teams are flexible. Flexibility in this context implies that both the individuals and the team itself are flexible (Nancarrow et al., 2013). Flexibility as a personal attribute refers to the ability of one professional to cover for the role of another but keeping in mind one’s boundaries. Besides, individuals should be flexible by responding to the constantly evolving patient needs (for example, the flexibility of the working shifts) as well as the service environment. Team culture as an attribute of an effective team encompasses commitment, reliability, mutual respect, trust as well as support. Furthermore, a good team culture focuses on the essence of fun, informal relationships, friendship among colleagues, and camaraderie. Personal attributes also constitute to an effective whereby team members are approachable, can delegate, can be able to compromise. Also, effective interprofessional team members are decisive, confident, have excellent organizational skills, are empathetic, are open to learning, know each other’s’ weaknesses and strengths, among other things. Finally, an effective interprofessional team should have good leadership and management and provides personal rewards and opportunities (Nancarrow et al., 2013). Regarding personal rewards and opportunities, an effective team should be able to give its members career development opportunities, autonomy, financial rewards, challenges within roles as well as the opportunities to think outside the box.

Strategies for Working Effectively in an Interprofessional Team

To get interprofessional members of a team on the same page-or trying to get them in one location-may be challenging. Assisting the members in getting past the daily duties, communication challenges, and conflicts to achieve the objective of working together is a problem. For there to be an effective interpersonal team, several strategies need to be adopted. The first strategy is to set a clear objective which every profession on the team works towards (Taplin, Foster & Shortell, 2013). Additionally, the roles, as well as the contributions of every team member, need to be clearly defined. The team should also have an open and transparent communication. All team members need to be engaged in the team’s activities. Further, for the members to work effectively in an interprofessional team, there needs to be an appreciation of diversity in terms of thinking, culture, and generation. The final strategy for working effectively in a team is to set up an effective conflict management process.

The practices for communication in an interprofessional collaboration call for advanced group and interpersonal communication skills and sensitivity to cultural and professional differences. In such a scenario, the best practices include expressing encouragement and support, making suggestions or comments to minimize tension, as well as encouraging corporation. Among the conflicts that can arise in such a setting include scope of practice, role boundary problems, as well as accountability. The best practices for addressing such challenges include intervention by group leaders and also the development of a conflict management protocol. Personal conflict management strategies entail the willingness to arrive at solutions, direct and open communication; humility; and showing respect. Conflict is innate among teams, but having an understanding of the possible barriers to the resolution of disputes can aid in the development of strategies for remedying conflicts promptly.

Possible Ethical Considerations that Need to be Addressed

To address the issues in healthcare through interprofessional collaboration calls for an active partnership among individuals from different training backgrounds with diverse experiences to work together to analyze, identify, and well as solving ethical concerns or questions to better the quality of care. Therefore, to recognize and also respond to the ethical concerns, a comprehension of the family members’ and patients’ preferences and values, and the preferences and values of the different professional-like nurses, priests, therapists, and physicians among others-is needs. A possible ethical concern that should be addressed includes decisions regarding treatments near the end of life, often result in ethical dilemmas for the medical professionals, family, and patients. In such a scenario, conflicts arise if the family or patient seek to continue with the life-sustaining options due to religious, cultural or other reasons, whereas the medical team proposes a limit on the life-sustaining treatment. Eliciting the viewpoints of all individuals involved in the decision-making process-not only to from the family or patient but also from other professional parties-is essential in guaranteeing the highest quality end-of-life care. This is only possible through the establishment of ethics committees (Engel & Prentice, 2013), which should not police the process of decision making or assume the roles of the other professional stakeholders but to open communication lines which will ensure the involvement of all parties.

Strategies for Introducing the Concept of Interprofessional Collaboration

The first strategy that an organization which does not practice interprofessional collaboration should begin with is to adopt a definition, principles, and values. This can entail a focus on community, family, and personal needs, among other things. The next strategy is to formulate the outcomes and ensure that they are assessable and achievable. After that, the organization should decide who will be in which team and then select the themes. The themes can include mental health care, primary healthcare, among others (El-Awaisi, Anderson, Barr, Wilby, Wilbur & Bainbridge, 2016). Upon the arrangement of the logistics, the team can now collaborate to achieve the set goals and objectives.

Conclusion

In the contemporary healthcare system, the process of care delivery is complex. It entails various interfaces as well as patient handoffs between several healthcare professionals with distinct occupational training and education levels. An effective healthcare practice thus requires several instances where vital information needs to be accurately communicated. Interprofessional collaboration is, therefore, essential to allow for the delivery of quality healthcare. Among the interprofessional teams, several characteristics need to exist for the teams to be effective. Lack thereof renders the team dysfunctional. Also, within the teams, several strategies need to be adopted to ensure that the team works effectively and also avoid conflicts that may arise due to issues such as ethics among other things.