Week 3: Collaborative Strategies with other Professions
What is Collaboration and why is it important ? Collaboration fosters open communication and shared decision making to achieve quality patient outcomes. It is a working practice where individuals work together to achieve a common goal. In the healthcare industry it is vital for collaboration amongst healthcare disciplines and professionals. It effectively identifies strengths within the roles that can enhance a patient’s care on a holistic level. It is the cornerstone of success.
Collaboration provides every team member with equal opportunities to participate and communicate their ideas. http//www.nutcache.com (May 28,2019)
Professional Nurses can use specific strategies to promote collaboration with other healthcare disciplines and professionals that can lead to successful outcomes and improve patient care.
1: Communicate: The Nurse is usually the first to engage in a dialogue with the patient. Assessment and Evaluation, obtaining History and Physical. Needs are identified problems are detected, thus the beginning of a Nursing Care Plan. The Nurse must first collaborate with the patient and inform them of the need for other disciplines involvement in their care.
2: Coordinate: Coordination with other disciplines is necessary to meet patient’s needs. This can be through Social services, Physical/Occupational Therapy, Home Health aide, Pharmacy, other family members and sometimes community assistance can be vital. The Nurse must now have a discussion (communicate) with the multidisciplinary team.
3: Delegate Responsibilities: Each disciplines/professionals plays an important role in the quality of care or information they provide, with delegation of responsibilities, each role is utilized to the fullest. A mixture of thinkers, problem solvers and communication skills along with experience and innovated ideas can now exchange information through Case Conferences, Emails, Telephone Calls and Video Conferencing.
4: Accountability: Each professional team member is held accountable for the information they provide, Deadlines for care must be met, schedules for patient visit/care must be kept. This is crucial as it reflects on the care that will be given. Patient participation is key to executing care plans and accomplishing goals.
Mutual trust and Respect: As professionals we all have our idiosyncrasies but in order to build a successful work environment Nurses must communicate expectations, establish goals and foster cohesiveness between team members. Specific collaboration strategies utilizes multiple health care workers from different professional backgrounds to deliver the highest quality of care. (WHO, 2010)
