Today’s healthcare environment involves patients that rely on multiple providers for the care. In order for the care to be safe and of high quality, the nursing community has recognized the need to embrace a team-based and collaborative treatment to care. The type of clinical and work setting is in the emergency department. The emergency department made use of interprofessional teams to facilitate the working process. Various members that were involved in the emergency department were ambulance paramedics, healthcare staff, diagnostic staff, and support staff. The healthcare staff included a triage nurse who was the specialist in the emergency department. Other members of the department were emergency physicians, registrars, hospital medical officers, nurse practitioners, care coordinators, and interns. All these members worked together to ensure that there was quality delivery of care.
The healthcare team had several roles that were used to facilitate the quality of care. They would ensure communication, diagnosis of the patient, conflict resolution, and proper cooperation. However, due to the nature of time limit within the emergency department, there was a problem of coordination among the different health care teams. The team function that could be improved in the team was that of proper coordination. The emergency department would work under high pressure as some of the patients brought in were in severe conditions and needed interventions quickly. By improving coordination, various team members would work together to ensure that the patient’s needs are met in a fast and straightforward way.
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Compassion
One nursing action that could contribute to compassion is through the use of compassion collaborative care (CCC). Compassionate care will involve patients and families working together to understand and respond to the concerns, distress, suffering, and pain. The aim would be to promote a positive patient-family team throughout the work setting. Nurses can contribute to compassion by showing care to families and patients. Nurses can contribute by speaking to families during meetings, ensuring timely communication, sharing sorrow, and informing family members of changes in the care plan (Pfaff and Markaki, 2017). Families want to feel supported regardless of the decisions. Nursing team members should exercise compassion and respectful treatment of various members. Respect can be shown through the use of emotional and verbal support of the families and co-workers.
Showing care to the family members will be especially important for the emergency department. The emergency department deals with family members that are in shock or uncertain about the health conditions of their loved ones. The nursing team can ensure that families are comforted throughout the time of shock and uncertainty. They should be able to communicate with the family members regarding the condition of the patients. This can improve coordination between various members of the team and solve the underlying coordination problem. In the case of mortality, the nursing team should be able to provide support and comfort throughout the difficult time.
Proper coordination with the family members will impact patient outcomes by improving the quality of care. Communication with the families with that health care department fully understands the condition of the patient. Some of the patients that are brought into the emergency room are in a state of coma or are in great pain and may not communicate their ailments effectively. In such instances, proper communication with the families is important to improve the quality of care.
Advocacy
Advocacy is understood as a concept where the nurse functions as the advocate of the patient. The nurse should thus keep attention to the safety of the patient and protect them from any form of harm. One nursing action that could contribute to advocacy is through protection and reporting harm from one of the team support members such as a physician, a nurse or other healthcare professional. Advocacy will involve the nurse working with the patient and other team members to ensure that the patient is protected from any form of harm. In case any harm falls on the patient, the nursing practitioner should report the incident to other team members including the family (Doherty, 2016). Working with other team members will play a big role in ensuring that there is a correct plan of action to reduce the harm.
The International Council of Nurses (ICN) code of ethics can be used as a guideline for advocacy among various health care professionals. According to the guidelines, when providing care nurses should ensure that they promote an environment which human rights, values, customs, and beliefs of the community, family, and individual are respected and protected (Winland-Brown, 2015). The statement shows that there is a need for the nursing department to collaborate with other team members in order to ensure advocacy. It shows that nurses have a responsibility with the society to deliver the right treatment. A nurse-advocate will promote understanding of various stakeholders concerned with the treatment of the patient.
Advocacy through reporting any form of harm to other members of the organization and the team will ensure that there is a culture of patient-centered care maintained throughout the organization. The emergency department involves delivery of care through a quick and fast response. Various team members and health care practitioners are thus at risk to cause errors due to the amount of pressure that they face. Any error caused to the patient should be reported to other team members who will ensure that treatment to reduce the harm is initiated.
Advocacy can improve patient outcomes by ensuring that all members of the health care team work towards the safety and protection of the patient from harm. This can play a big role in ensuring that the care is error free. Any errors that have been made during the delivery of treatment will be solved through a quick and fast response. This should remove any sort of harm and danger that could put the patient at risk.
Resilience
The field of nursing is especially difficult and resilience is important to go through some of the challenges. One way to build on resilience is through the use of a supportive workplace culture where members of the interprofessional team feel supported. Senior staff members that have a managerial responsibility should create a supportive environment by fostering proper relationships. Such relationships can contribute to the resilience of various team members since they will be called upon to support colleagues in times that are difficult. Even without a proper managerial responsibility, nurses can create a supportive culture by treating other colleagues with respect (Barratt, 2018). Nurses should thus be aware of the effect they create in the entire organization when they show support to their colleagues.
Nurses and various team members can also ensure that there working teams are resilient through the use of individual reflection and group reflection. According to Chadwick (2016), individual reflection has been shown to improve and support resilience. A particular type of group reflection should be used to support the well-being of the staff and to build a strong team that can create an effective health care organization. The reflection can be done specifically to focus on the emotional experience of various individuals that work in the nursing department. It will encourage emotional resonance in the department so that individuals feel less isolated. It would also create a team that promotes trusting of each of each other and create clear communication and improve care.
The emergency department has an especially challenging work setting and it is important that the team members show resilience. This can help in creating a supportive workplace culture within the institution. Nurses in the emergency department may have to work extra hours in case of an increased number of patients and increased admission. The emergency department is also sometimes understaffed and some team members may have to work longer hours than expected. By offering support towards each other, the emergency department can provide support to one of the team members in case one of them goes through a significant amount of stress. The emergency department will have an effective means of support to the nurses by creating a sense of community. Resilience can increase the level of understanding between the different colleagues as they offer support to each other in a difficult environment.
Resilience among patient care teams will improve patient outcomes by ensuring that patients receive optimum and continuity of care. In situations where there are problems with staffing, resilient nurses will ensure that there is continuity of care. This is because the resilient nurses should be able to provide care even in the difficult moments. Resilience can also be used to improve the work environment and thus enhance patient outcomes in the care. Patients that are in an environment where nurses are resilient have a positive work environment.
Evidence-Based Practice
Evidence-based practice involves collaboration practice through the sharing of knowledge. Evidence-based practice can be important in making decisions through adequate knowledge of various team leaders. According to Arndottir (2015), knowledge sharing will be important in closing the gap between evidence based-practice diagnostics and treatment choices. The diagnostic and treatment will improve through the use of evidence-based treatment approaches. While the evidence itself does not make the decision, it can help to support the patient care process. Full integration of the evidence-based practice in patient care will enhance opportunities for better clinical outcomes and increasing the quality of life. Ehrenberg (2016) also notes that medical centers can develop collaboration with universities in order to create a collaborative approach to help in the support of the evidence-based practice. The author notes that medical centers and universities can enhance the knowledge of nurses and their research skills. This will be important in providing research opportunities for the health care team and to improve the knowledge when treating the different patients.
Evidence-based practice should be important in creating an organizational culture that enhances knowledge sharing in the emergency department. The emergency department can be a difficult field which requires timely diagnosis and timely treatment of patients is important. Knowledge sharing among various team members will help to facilitate the timely diagnosis and timely treatment. Evidence-based practice can also enhance a positive culture within the emergency department. Sharing knowledge enhances understanding among various team members to ensure that they can work together to create a positive and supportive environment. A study by Stokke (2014) showed a correlation between evidence-based practice and a positive attitude in the workplace. The positive environment resulted in better beliefs and better attitudes for the institution that incorporated evidence-based practice through the sharing of knowledge.
Evidence-based care can be used to improve the quality of care for patients in the emergency department. Knowledge sharing through evidence-based practice will play a critical role in ensuring the right diagnosis and right treatment options are made for the patients. In case of any complications with the treatment, knowledge sharing will be used to identify the cause of complication and identify various changes that can be made to change the treatment. By ensuring the sharing of knowledge, the quality of care will be improved as patients will have the best treatment option. Such collaboration is important to facilitate knowledge sharing to enhance the right treatment options.
Summary
The use of interprofessional teams through iCARE can be used to enhance the quality of care for the patients. The emergency department is a highly sensitive department that requires the collaboration of various teams and team members to provide the best services to patients. iCARE will be able to support patients through compassion, advocacy, resilience and the use of evidence-based practice in the delivery of care. Compassion will be applied to the patients and their families through the challenging moments. This will enhance communication between the clinical nurses and patients and ensure coordination between various teams. Advocacy ensures that the concerns of the patient are prioritized. Various members of the team can work towards ensuring that the needs of the patient are put into consideration. Resilience in the nursing profession will be enhanced through the use of a supportive framework. Team members can ensure that they support each other to build resilience among the professionals. Evidence-based practice can be used among various team members to enhance the quality of care. This can enhance knowledge sharing among various team members to improve the quality of care.
References
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Stokke, K., Olsen, N. R., Espehaug, B., & Nortvedt, M. W. (2014). Evidence-based practice beliefs and implementation among nurses: a cross-sectional study. BMC Nursing , 13 (1), 8. doi:10.1186/1472-6955-13-8.
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