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Critically discuss lack of teamwork as a human factor known to impact on interprofessional collaboration and service user safety
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Introduction
Collaboration in health care settings can be analysed as the efficiency of each health care providers to accept complementary roles within teams, work in collaboration, share role and responsibilities for addressing problems and making decisions required to frame and continue plans for service users’ care. Sfantou et al., (2017) have identified that respect, trust and collaboration are the inherent aspects to any team’s effectiveness. The communication between nurses and other health care professionals are the key factor for successful inter-professional collaboration and thus ensure quality of care and safety within healthcare settings. However, there is no systematic evaluation of the present condition of inter-professional team of the health care sectors associated with safety and patient wellbeing.
Lack of adequate communication and collaboration among team members may lead to poor patient care outcomes. Nurses can significantly prevent such issues and encourage positive patients’ outcome and service users’ satisfaction by encouraging effective communication and collaboration within inter-professional teams. Nurses play very important role to support collaboration and communication between all team members within an inter-professional team, the patient and their family members. Nursing professionals encourages person centred care, acknowledging patients’ dignity and needs, holistic care, advocacy, therapeutic relationships and patient centred provision. Nurses further are required to be skilled, knowledgeable and competent, to encourage safety of service users, accountability and to adhere to a range of professional responsibilities.
Inter-professional and collaborative working
Pinto et al., (2012) have demonstrated that inter-professional team work may lead to employee satisfaction as well as employee wellbeing. Inter-professional team work further nurtures service users’ satisfaction and also result in minimised hospital stay, mortality, medical errors, better patient safety which is the national goals of the health and social care settings. To ensure patient safety research studies have determined inter-professional teamwork in patient care that required to be enhanced (Knowles et al., 2013). World Health Organization has highlighted the significance of inter-professional teams to heighten the knowledge and competence related to service users’ safety. WHO further focused on the behaviour of the professions linked with patient safety that encompasses behaviour, norms, and attitudes, perception of risk and prevention ability and awareness (World Health Organization, 2013).
Perception of inter-professional members plays very important role in enhancing inpatient service and safety outcomes. However, there prevails no systematic evaluation of the present condition of inter-professional team of the health care sectors of the country in collaboration with behaviour about inter-professional teamwork linked with safety and opinion about patient safety. Current research investigation demonstrates high to moderate level of inter-professional teamwork in their healthcare settings that comprised of inpatient care teams. The participants of the teams that were included in the research study determined team goals, had strong collaboration and problems in integrating knowledge (Hardin, Kilian, & Spykerman, 2017). The physicians who are engaged in the study have opined that inter-professional teams are more positive in their wards than nurses, as they included several experiences, values, strategies to handling issues and coordination between professions. The difference between unprofessional teams and inter-professional teams are alarming as nurses because of perceived negative collaboration might not share their concerns and physicians also might avoid seeking additional information as they have not observed the suboptimal collaboration (Dinius et al., 2020).
Adeniran et al., (2012) have found that integrating services that comprises several health care providers is a significant approach to better treat populations and communities with limited access to health care services. From the name it can be implied that teamwork in health care settings includes improved communication and collaboration to widen the traditional role and responsibilities of health care staffs and to make decisions and plan as a unit that functions towards a common goal. Bittner (2018) found out that team perform their tasks better when they are having clear understanding about protocols, procedures and purpose (Gallagher & Gallagher, (2012).). Integration of communication and meetings are essential to share ideas and discuss about patient outcomes, and provide suggestions to enhance performance. In decentralised health care settings, collaboration and team work are essential with several levels of health workers. Several strategies to promote inter-professional and collaborative working are encourage team building activities, reward and recognition approach, encouraging open communication, share knowledge, insights and resources, incorporate collaboration into day to day projects and tasks and adopt a platform that supports social interaction (Kaitz & Ray, 2021).
Teamwork has been an essential health intervention for a wide number of reasons, medical care provision is becoming increasingly complex in nature, new methods of service delivery are needed to be learned quickly, increasing ageing population with chronic diseases such as diabetes cardiovascular diseases, hypertension and cancer have forced medical staffs adopt multidisciplinary approach to health care. Different nations are concerned about accessing healthcare services to diverse population. Currie & White, (2012) further have determined that working together minimises the number of medical errors and improves patient safety. Teamwork and collaborative approach further minimises the issues related with health care staffs such as burnout that are likely to occur due to work related stress and higher work pressure. Entire team of health provides currently work together to improve patient wellbeing instead of depending on an individual health care professional. Centralised power and hierarchy of health care organizations are now a day broken by the health care providers. Team work is based on communication that engages both service users and entire family members find that patients feel more satisfied with the care and accept treatment at ease (Sanko, et al., 2020).
Evaluate service delivery in relation to professional role
Over the couple of decades healthcare has accepted the limitations of the hierarchical and traditional approach of care provision and there is need to proceed towards team-based, collaborative approach to enhance patient’s outcomes and health providers alike. Inter-professional team training that encompasses strategies support improve communication, collaboration and cooperation and this is the method that is adopted to ensure a culture of safety (Scully, 2015). The base of interpersonal healthcare team is one that encourages shared accountability among the healthcare service providers included within the team, strong communication and advocacy for service users. Effective inter-professional teamwork practice can be facilitated by nurses by reach across boundaries beyond multidisciplinary and collaborate with other professionals of healthcare team, nurses must able to communicate their role’s importance and their unique perception and ideas to the teamwork outcome. Nurses possess an important position to support collaboration and communication between all team members that encompasses healthcare professionals, the patient and their family members. Holistic viewpoint of the nurses allows them to encourage roles of service users and their family members in the patient care team (Hanks, 2013).
Nurses also have strong communication abilities by which they communicate effectively with individuals from diverse educational backgrounds including, such as technologists, physicians, patients, administrators and family members. Nurses play very important role interacting with patient care team members, performing varied roles and objectives and providing care through coordination (Sim et al., 2018). Nurses within an inter-professional team can improve their influence by achieving team members trust, being a good listener, abide by promises, and remain accountable.
Lack of effective communication and improper collaboration among team members may result in poor patient care outcomes. Nurses can contribute to prevent such issues and encourage positive service users’ outcome and patient satisfaction by conveying the concerns and addressing issues immediately. Patient safety can be facilitated by a wide number of strategies and techniques with the efforts made within inter-professional team. Patients are advocated by the patient’s ensuring teat the service user receives appropriate and safe care when required. Advocacy encompasses both medical staffs and nurses chain of commands to provide attention when required to the needs of every patient and aiming to achieve the satisfactory outcomes (Al-Abri & Al-Balushi, 2014). Nurses responsibility in healthcare quality broaden beyond the safe care service that is complied with clinical standards and best evidence to wider system and organizational standard, and safety structures. Nurses possess professional responsibility to monitor, evaluate, report on the effectiveness and accuracy of healthcare, determining improvements on healthcare standards. Responsibilities encompasses patient centred care through processes and systems that enables shared decision making, comply with cultural needs, provision of continuous care, openness, patients health education.
Nurses also are likely to participate and motivate and apply evidenced based studies in improving patients’ wellbeing, promote safety and show clinical leadership. The broad range of safety role desires and quality improvement requirements of nurses assumes the workforce is possessed to meet its responsibilities and is aware of its responsibilities (You et al., 2013). On the contrary, standard of health care might decline if nurses are unaware of their responsibilities and do not consider their responsibilities significantly, or do not feel adequately efficient to fulfil those responsibilities. Nurses perception that constitutes quality of care may be observed indirect but significant source of information about considered roles. Nurses’ roles are accepted in person centred care with application of a range of approaches, considering patients’ dignity and needs, holistic care, presence of nursing, advocacy, therapeutic relationships and patient centred provision. Literature further adds that nurse’s acceptance of the requirement to be skilled, knowledgeable and competent, to encourage safety of service users, accountability, to comply with a range of professional responsibilities (De Simone, Planta, & Cicotto, 2018).
Apply and evaluate their specialist knowledge on patients experience
The standard and effectiveness of patient care provision can be measured depending on opinions and satisfaction of patients and their family members. Patients’ satisfaction is the most significant determiner of quality of care which is considered as a result of healthcare provision. Nursing care is one of the key components of health care services. Patients satisfaction linked with the nursing care has been an essential predictor of overall satisfaction with health care settings and a significant goal for every health care setting (Radtke, 2013). The nurses have vital role in providing psychological and emotional support to service users and their families in different settings such as delivering support the service users through diagnosis and ensuring maximum care provided to them. Alongside the provision of technical services, nursing professionals must possess professional awareness, skills and attitudes, providing informational, practical and emotional supports.
Nurses with clinical expertise include theoretical and practical knowledge and they are often segregated form co-workers by their intuitive efficiency in making critical clinical decisions while understanding the whole situation. Technical skills and expertise influence nurses quality of care and clinical judgement and improves when they apply and evaluate both practical and theoretical knowledge in actual clinical settings. Nurses’ skills of effective communication engage their patients and their family members to provide detailed information about the health conditions, plan a treatment plan, and expected outcomes (Wong, Cummings, & Ducharme, 2013). Salmond & Echevarria, (2017) demonstrated that patients believe that main competencies of nurses comprise proper attitude and behaviour, making time for service users, composure and listening and having empathy. To meet these expectations of the patients, nursing professionals need to communicate effectively and develop rapport with service users. Research in the Press Ganey report Performance Insights: Health Care Improvement Trends demonstrates that nurses with empathy and friendly behaviour have linked to improved patient wellbeing (Brown, 2021). Additionally, nurses who conduct regular meeting with the patients have positive impact on patient satisfaction rates that have been determined by anecdotal evidence and data. A 2016 study published in the JBI Database of Systematic Reviews and Implementation Reports demonstrated that nurses with rounding practice can enhance safety outcomes. Rounding practice minimised patient falls by 50% while there was 11% betterment in patient’s pain management (Khalil, et al., 2020).
Conclusion
Inter-professional and collaborative health care teams play vital role in improving health care outcomes and safety within the healthcare sector. Although a wide number of systematic assessment have-not been accomplished that consider the linking between inter-professional teams effectiveness with improving patients’ safety and improved service users’ wellbeing, Crowell & Boynton, (2020) have demonstrated that health care professionals who took active participation in the studies have acknowledged that inter-professional teams minimises the occurrences of medical errors, improves collaboration, coordination and communication among health care providers.
Role of nursing professionals have been highlighted by wide number of research studies and recommended that inter-professional collaboration are rightly supported by effective communication and coordination encouraged by the nurses. Nurses have effective communication skills that enable them to communicate with several health care professionals and providing care through coordination. Nurses also are likely to participate and promote and apply evidenced based studies in improving patients’ wellbeing, promote safety and maintain clinical leadership. Nurses role and responsibility is likely to promote person centred care with application of a range of approaches, highlighting patients’ dignity and needs, holistic care, advocacy, therapeutic relationships and patient centred care. Nursing professionals’ specialist knowledge has been found to improve patient outcome and safety.
References
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