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Interprofessional working By using the right literature this assignment will examine an outpatient department, critically analysing and exploring how professionals in this setting work effectively together and what hinders their interprofessional working. Further more the essay will identify the key issues and concept of interprofessional working in health care as a whole. Lastly the essay will also conclude by drawing together the main points and principle argument. Interprofessional working involves people from various profession and agencies working together.
Interprofessional working is also a collaboration venture (Mc Gray 2006) in which individual that is involved shares the common objective of developing their mutual goals, which are achieved through agreed plans and evaluating according to their agreed procedures. Collaboration can be achieved by putting forward their knowledge and expertise (cook et al 2005) to facilitate joint decision based upon shared professional views. Interprofessional working is a very common concept and the essential means of delivery care.
All members of the interprofessional team have the responsibility for the safety of their patients, and explicitly discussing and recording patient’s problems. Woking with different professional however can be very challenging because each professional have a particular approach to patients care for instance, a doctor might decide to treat a cancer patient by using chemotherapy even though there is a small chance of success and the treatment has significant side effect. The nurse on the other hand might feel like the level of pain from the side effect is too much that treatment should not continue.
These different in views should be recognised and finding a solution for the patient’s care, meaning that health care professionals must share their views, justify treatment approaches, and most importantly involve the patient. The success of interprofessional working relies on sharing patient concerns as well as professional perspectives, values and beliefs (Molyneux 2001, Freeman 2000). The concept of interprofessional working is continuously developed through education within the health care setting. nter-professional education engenders a respect for and understanding of the role of other associated professions (McCroskey and Robertson 2004). Inter-professional teaching contributes to development of interprofessional working by giving students the opportunity to observe good role models for collaboration, working with different health care members and interacting as peers. Undergraduate educations now incorporate interprofessional modules in their programmes to introduce student to the ideal of interprofessional working hence promoting the understanding of their roles as healthcare providers.
The world health organisation (WHO) suggested that quality is the process of meeting the needs and expectation of patients and health service. Quality can also be described as striving for and reaching excellences standard of care. It involves assessing the appropriateness of medical tests and treatments and measures to continue to improve care in all health care fields, from health professionals that helps with treatment, safety and recovery of acutely or chronically ill patients to surgeons that operates on brain tumour patient.
Some of the aspects required in providing quality care in various health care facilities include recognising standard that ensure that proper procedure and staffing ratio are met, ensuring that medical records are continuously reviewed in order to assess the effectiveness of treatment or procedure, access to reliable health advice, effective treatment delivered by trusted professionals, involvement in decisions and respect for patient preferences, providing emotional support, empathy and most importantly continuity of care.
McWilliam et al (2009) suggest that interprofessional working is very challenging in the workplace, and it is not an easy concept for healthcare professionals to adopt. He argued that interprofessional working is not being delivered to patients due to healthcare professionals misunderstanding the policies, education and research regarding interprofessional working. It has been suggested that this is due to the lack of support and training from managers and that managers should involve staff in changes within practice and that this involvement facilitate co-operation (deegan et al 2004).
Other Key issues of interprofessional working include: power, poor communication, conflict, team work and ethical issues. When issues like this arise in a healthcare setting, it affects the effectiveness of interprofessional working and quality of care that is provided. Loxley refers to conflict as being interwoven with interprofesssional cooperation and considers this to be a combination of social and professional difference.
Social difference can relate to age, gender, pay, ethnicity and status differentials. Conflict evokes an emotional response which could be expressed in various ways such as verbal and none verbal behaviours, for example, blaming people, taking people for granted because of their quiet nature, glaring or slouching position ( Drinka and Clark 2005). This kind of respond can be unproductive and those involved should avoid reacting emotionally and try to react rationally.
Dealing with conflict and the process of trying to reach shared decisions is likely to involve a degree of discomfort and in order for individuals in this situation to protect themselves from such discomfort, they might collude in what (Loxley 2004) refers to as myth of togetherness where group members see the main aspect of interprofessional working as congenial relationship hence finding productive ways of addressing factors relating to conflict such as different perspective and priorities. Conflict can result in dysfunctional interprofessional relationship in addition to limiting creativity and impairing efficiency.
Team work is an important part of healthcare profession. Effective team work can increase patients’ outcomes and improve patient care. Communication accepting responsibilities and respect for fellow health professionals are all important aspect of team work. Fewer errors arise in clinical settings when teamwork is effective because the processes are standardized and improved through constant monitoring and measurement. All member of an effective and efficient team knows their own responsibilities. Another trait of a successful team is that members look out for each other and collectively predict errors before they occur.
Moreover, team members in high reliability settings trust one another’s judgements, speak up for patients and attend to one another’s safety concerns. Addressing the need for teamwork training for healthcare workers is crucial and progress in developing standard methods for communicating critical information among team member also contribute to effective team work, however lack of clarity in combination with individual differences in communication styles can damage professional relationships and respect for one another.
Additionally, the risk of potential patient errors increases with ineffective communication. Many of the health care team situations that lead to errors are as a result of poor team work among members of staffs. Example of team related behaviours that increase risk of patients care errors including: failure to inform team members of a patient patient’s problems; failure to plan for and communicate contingencies; failure to monitor situation and other team members’ activities; and overt hostility and frustration which may result from fatigue, complexity, and workload.
Ethic is referred to as the concept of what is right or wrong, moral and immoral. Ethical behaviour is generally considered behaviour that is in line with the accepted moral code. Ethical issues is one of the dilemma healthcare professionals face on a daily bases, many of which are directly linked to legislative regarding confidentiality, ethics of medical technologies and so on. Health care professionals are bound by their own code of ethic which is enforced by disciplinary procedures. For example a patient had a new job and was in a 6 month probationary period.
The patient decided to test for his or her HIV status few weeks into his or her probationary period and the test result came back positive. A laboratory employee copied the test result and sent it to his or her employer, without obtaining permission. When the employer looks at the result and calculates that this could cost him or her financially, he decides to terminate the employee’s probationary period. This unauthorised disclosure of the most private information invaded the patient’s right to privacy and caused him or her to lose the job.
The medical information in patient files is confidential. The health care professionals in possession of files must always carryout their duties of making sure that patients information are secure and kept confidential except for special circumstances where permission must be obtain to release medical information to third parties. Respecting confidentiality, autonomy and recognising the duty of care that is owed to all the patients are some of the ethical duties of healthcare professionals. Moreover there are legal implications if they are breached, there fore there are also legal duties.
Communication issues among interprofessionals can prevent the quality of care. Factors that can impede effective communication. First, interruptions can disrupt work flow and cause a negative impact on the safe, effective complication of tasks. Second healthcare professionals such as doctor and nurses are educated in separate silos. This can hinder effectiveness of communication between the two disciplines because of differences in the implicit assumptions of the two professions. Also authority gradients may exist in which health care providers are afraid to speak up.
This is particularly evident in a hierarchical structure that impedes both upward communication and dissemination of critical information that could prevent an error from occurring. Given the complexity of today’s health environment, it is not always clear who is responsible for what. This adds to the confusion and places patients at risk for needs not being addressed in a timely manner. The multiple transitions (also known as handover) that occur across the health care continuum are a high-profile factor that increases the risk of miscommunication. Handover occur during shift changes, transfers and discharges.
During each handover there is risk of loss of critical information (Dayton & Henriksen, 2006). Further more, ineffective communication can lead to improper diagnosis and delayed or improper medical treatment. As such, effective communication can benefit the delivery of health care and enhance a patient’s recovery. Effective communication between the interprofessionals is imperative to the health care field, because it enables doctor, nurses and other healthcare providers to inform one another about patient’s treatment so that everyone can be on the same page. High quality care depends on how health professionals work together.
Working in a surgical day centre, I have experienced how professionals in this setting work together to care for patient with different health condition. However there are factors that hinder their collaborative working and those that strengthen their effective working relationship. Struggling to communicate effectively is one factor that inhabits the way some care givers in this setting collaborate with each other. For instant the relationship between some of the nurses and doctors lack encouragement and respect for one another. Hospitals are chaotic and stressful.
Working in such an environment can lead to frustration and it can take a toll on the staff. Instead of a good working relationship which may never have been fostered to its full potential from the start, professionals can become frustrated. As a result, the frustrated team will not effectively communicate and patient care may suffer devastating consequences. In order to avoid frustration, these care givers need to work together despite the complexities and chaos of a hospital, and they need to embrace each other’s profession and to engage each other, not diminish or degrade one another.
Another factor that hinders the interprofessional working within this setting is poor documentation among members of staffs which sometimes impacted on patients care because equipment, medication or treatment were not properly documented. This affected the team work between the healthcare professionals because the competency of some individuals in the team was put to question when it comes to providing quality care and effectively documenting care that is been rendered to patients.
Healthcare givers are supposed to be communicators, especially when documenting patient information. If what is documented does not communicate, then the healthcare giver has failed in his or her profession and legal duty. Moreover if previous documentation was not properly documented or incomplete, other members of the team would have a hard time making a good decision based on the information available. Moreover there are various aspects where nurses and other professionals work effectively together.
When it comes to recommending patients to the right support system for example referral to social workers, the doctors and nurses discusses the patient’s condition before deciding their next line of action. The multidisciplinary team in the setting work well in long term care situations because it is virtually impossible to tease apart the ever-changing social and healthcare needs of dependent individuals and their family caregivers. Group presentation determined to be an excellent example of team work.
Group presentation has helped me with my essay writing when it comes to acquiring useful information. I have learnt that information can be acquired from different sources but the most important thing to do is to identity the useful once. For example when searching the internet, lot of information relation to the topic would come up on the search engine but most of them might not be relevant to the topic that is been research. As a group we worked out meeting times as best as we could. I believe this is an xperience each members of the group would remember in the future, especially when arranging meeting with colleagues in our future career. During group presentation, it is very important to communicate very effectively because it shows one is able to share information and ideas with other people. In conclusion the best patient care is collaborative care, where all members of the multidisciplinary health team work together to provide the patient with the best holistic care, physical, emotional, spiritual available.
A lack of teamwork leads to disorganization, strife and gaps in communication that will lead to medical errors and contribute to patient morbidity and mortality. In the field of healthcare work, effective collaboration and interaction can have direct consequence for patient care. For example, the Victoria Climbe inquiry (Department of Health, 2003) and the Bristol inquiry (Department of Health, 2001a) both indicated the need to move towards collaborative teamwork, and the need for a review of professional education and training in the UK (Humphris and Hean, 2004).