BSN-FP4017 Assessment

BSN-FP4017 Assessment

Interprofessional Collaboration and Teamwork

Meaning of Interprofessional Collaboration

Interprofessional collaboration refers to a process where health care providers from different professions coordinate and work as a team by sharing ideas, expertise, and knowledge to promote and foster quality care delivery (Bosch & Mansell, 2015). The purpose of the coordination is to create uniformity of decision-making among the care professionals, patients, communities, and families in order to promote optimal and holistic health results.

Compared to other fields, interprofessional collaboration in nursing is broader and entails promoting patient experience and enhancing conducive work environment from a team based perspective. This is achieved by embracing the individual and collective skills and experience of team members hence promoting efficient communication and decision-making that allow delivery of quality services (Bosch & Mansell, 2015). The quality of health care services plays a fundamental role in not only delivering positive outcomes to the health consumers but also ensuring that the loyalty of patients to the health stakeholders is enforced. One of the strategies that help professionals to deliver high-quality health care services is by embracing Interprofessional collaboration as part of the health care culture.

The Characteristics and Qualities of Effective Interprofessional Teams in Terms of Patient Care and Safety

There are a myriad of characteristics and qualities of an effective interprofessional team. For example, an effective team is characterized by good communication between the team members. In an interprofessional team, communication is in most cases perceived to be intra-team communication. This form of communication emphasizes that all the involved team members can listen to one another, and they are free to raise or communicate issues of bettering the team and the patients in general. Therefore, an effective team should have appropriate skill mix to enhance unity and coordination (Tiffan, 2014). In this context, skill mix entails the breadth and mix of personalities, staff, professions, personal attributes, and experience. Skill mix is in other terms referred as team value diversity, and this is a core aspect of ensuring that an organization promotes creativity, personal development, and problem-solving skills. In every health facility, there are different professionals including nurses, physicians, social workers, public health professionals and pharmacists, and when all of the stakeholders collaborate and work as a team, good results are achieved.

In addition, an effective interprofessional team needs to have a clear vision as this serves as the roadmap that all the contributions and efforts of the team members should aim to achieve. Having a clear vision ensures that the activities of the team members are directed towards the attainment of the vision. For example, the health care professionals can focus on ensuring high-quality health care services are delivered to ensure positive outcomes and safety of patients.

An effective interpersonal team considers the importance of good leadership. A team needs to have a good leader, who oversees the delivery processes of the health care professionals, giving directions, enforcing the adherence of the team members to the established laws and regulations of the health facility, and identifying issues or challenges that need to be solved (Nancarrow et al., 2013). This help in promoting efficiency in care delivery. In addition, an effective interprofessional team should have appropriate processes and resources. For example, healthcare professionals need to have access to physical resources such as computers, parking, office space and others. The team members need to have access to appropriate and efficient procedures and systems, such as induction policies, processes, and paperwork that serves the purpose of ensuring effective health care service delivery.

The Benefits and Limitations of Interprofessional Teams for Health Care Organizations, Members of A Team, And Patients

There are numerous benefits and challenges of interprofessional teams for health care organizations, team members, and patients. First, interprofessional teams enable the health care facility to earn a good reputation, especially when patients are satisfied with the services that the health professionals provide. Second, through interprofessional teams, the health organization manages to achieve its set goals and objectives within the set duration and budget (Nancarrow et al., 2013). Interprofessional teams also help in the reduction of organizational conflicts. In addition, teamwork promotes personal development, especially due to the fact that it provides an opportunity for the team members to learn and embrace diverse cultures, experience, views, and expertise among others. Brainstorming is also enhanced and this result to acquisition of appropriate problem-solving skills. Patients also manage to achieve high-quality health care services.

On the other hand, interprofessional teams negatively affect the decision-making process of an organization. When too many individuals are involved, the decision making processes tend to be slow. In some cases, there lacks clarity of the roles of the team members, and this can result in medical errors.

The Challenges of Working in an Interprofessional Team

In most cases, working in an interprofessional team is challenging due to numerous factors. The team leaders may encourage discrimination and lack of accountability in decision-making process based on social class, gender, education, religion, and ethnicity. In a health care setting, the health professionals have unique job titles, and multiple responsibilities assigned to them and failure to consult all stakeholders would create organizational conflict (Reeves et al., 2010). In addition, cases of role overlap and confusion tend to be high in an interprofessional team. Lack of clarity over the accountability, responsibilities and functional roles of the team members can result in communication breakdown, and to the worst, the propagation of medical errors. In addition, some team members are lazy, and this means that working with them may result in overloading of some professionals.

Failure to overcome these challenges adversely affects the overall performance of all health professionals hence promoting inefficiency in service delivery. Patients are also not able to access affordable and quality care because there is poor collaboration and communication among the care providers within the facility. In addition, there is also a high possibility of medical errors and malpractices that would emanate from care provider’s negligence hence affecting patient’s safety.

Strategies to Help People Come Together to Work Effectively as A Collaborative Team

There are a number of strategies that health care professionals can embrace in order to work together as a team. For example, the health professionals should have a common goal and purpose of collaborating as a team. The goal or purpose of a team be identified by the members discussing why they need to work as a team, and not individually. In addition, the individuals need to trust each other by being honest, shunning away from talking behind each other`s back, giving team members the benefits of doubt and eliminating conflicts of interest amongst themselves (Erickson & Gratton, 2017). In addition, there is need for clear definition of responsibilities and roles of each member in order to avoid role overlap. This is fundamental in defining accountability and minimizing internal conflicts that hinder delivery of quality care. The interprofessional team members also need to embrace and appreciate work group diversity in order to enhance innovation, creativity and problem-solving skills. Lastly, effective and open communication is also a cornerstone of the success of any team.

How Interprofessional Teams Define Success

The interprofessional team define success based on the achievement of the set goals and objectives. For example, if one of the objectives is to ensure that the team members deliver high-quality health care services, the team assesses the achievement of this objective by evaluating whether patient’s satisfaction is achieved as well as the reduction of medical errors. In addition, the interprofessional team’s measure success based on the commitment and satisfaction of the team members (Bosch & Mansell, 2015). For example, if the team’s members are happy and support working as a team and no complaints are raised concerning the same, then the team is on the road to achieving success.

BSN-FP4017 Assessment