ESSAY: Interprofessional Collaboration and Teamwork

You have been asked to submit an article to be published in your organization’s newsletter. After careful deliberation, you have decided to address the topic of interprofessional collaboration and teamwork in health care organizations, and how teams can be successful. Your article should be 3–4 pages in length, not including the title page and references page. Format this assessment following APA guidelines.

Complete the following in your article:

Explain what is meant by the term interprofessional collaboration from a nursing perspective. (Do not simply copy a definition from a dictionary or other resource!)
Describe the characteristics and qualities of effective interprofessional teams in terms of patient care and safety.
Describe the benefits and limitations of interprofessional teams for health care organizations, members of a team, and patients.
Explain the challenges of working in an interprofessional team.
Describe strategies to help people come together to function effectively as a collaborative team.
Explain how interprofessional teams define success. Consider how the definition might change based on the types of situations the team was formed to handle.
Scoring Guide:
Explain the meaning of the term “interprofessional collaboration” from a nursing perspective. Does not explain the meaning of the term “interprofessional collaboration.” Provides a definition of the term “interprofessional collaboration” but does not explain it from a nursing perspective. Explains the meaning of the term “interprofessional collaboration” from a nursing perspective. Explains the meaning of the term “interprofessional collaboration” from a nursing perspective, and considers how it differs from interprofessional collaboration in other fields.
Describe the characteristics and qualities of effective interprofessional teams in terms of patient safety. Does not describe the characteristics and qualities of effective interprofessional teams. Lists the characteristics and qualities of effective interprofessional teams, or describes the characteristics and qualities of effective interprofessional teams, but not in terms of patient safety. Describes the characteristics and qualities of effective interprofessional teams in terms of patient safety. Describes the characteristics and qualities of effective interprofessional teams in terms of patient safety and explains how the characteristics and qualities contribute to patient safety.
Describe the benefits, limitations, and challenges of working in interprofessional teams for health care organizations, team members, and patients. Does not describe the benefits, limitations, and challenges of working in interprofessional teams for health care organizations, team members, and patients. Describes the benefits and limitations of interprofessional teams for health care organizations or interprofessional team members or patients, but not all three. Lists the challenges of working in interprofessional teams. Describes the benefits, limitations, and challenges of working in interprofessional teams for health care organizations, team members, and patients. Analyzes the benefits and limitations of interprofessional teams for health care organizations, team members, and patients. Explains the challenges of working in interprofessional teams and considers the implications for the patients of a team that fails to overcome challenges.
Describe strategies to help people work effectively together.

ANSWER

Inter-professional Collaboration and Teamwork

Ensuring the best hospital experience with quality treatment demands for coordination and effective communication, among all the healthcare providers involved in the patient care process.  Therefore, interprofessional collaboration is the cooperative approach among healthcare practitioners from different fields towards solving common health problems (Liu & Tsasis, 2017). Interprofessional collaboration improves trust and respect levels between physicians and also encourages equal treatment in the nursing workforce.

Characteristics of A Successful Interprofessional Healthcare Team

The following features always determine effectiveness in healthcare interprofessional teams — similar goals, respect among the team members, effective communication and clear role definition. The primary goal in most healthcare interprofessional teams is to provide quality and patient-centered care. A capable team has all its members understand the mission and the required objectives to be achieved towards the accomplishment of the target. Respect among team members is also a quality that can be sensed in a successful team. The virtue of respect reduces aspects of conflicts and encourages togetherness during the healthcare delivery process. Also, effective communication techniques characterize a successful team since each member is in a proper position to receive timely information. It helps by reducing levels of confusion caused by the acquisition of inappropriate knowledge (Franz et al., 2018). Clear role definition helps in promoting equity and reducing the feeling of being marginalized and discriminated. It is a quality that when embraced it supports progress since each has full information on the tasks assigned to be performed.

Benefits of Interprofessional Teams for Healthcare Organizations Collaboration in healthcare empowers the team members, reduces the communication gaps among departments and improves patient care. Before interprofessional collaboration in healthcare, all the medical decisions were made by the doctors. However, implementation of the collaboration aspect has promoted a sense of teamwork where other members of healthcare delivery are also provided with a platform to contribute to deciding the treatment procedures hence empowering the entire workforce.  A more communicative environment emerges when individuals are working together. Working alone or independently can lead to missing some essential symptoms hence medication errors (Wieczorek, Marent, Dorner & Dür, 2016). Collaboration has enabled medical practitioners to share ideas about their patients’ treatment and work together to provide quality care. Working…