Inter-professional teamwork is the foundation of a successful team. In the healthcare field, interprofessional collaboration occurs when more than one professional from different areas of practice or study work together. Successful interprofessional teamwork includes all members of the healthcare team. The professionals in the team communicate and make decisions together, depending on patients’ needs. Communication helps the team to build a sustainable and trusting relationship. Without communication, teamwork among healthcare providers becomes worthless. This offers the patient with quality care, including all aspects of their healthcare needs. Effective interprofessional partnership is essential because it fosters active engagement of each discipline in patient care, where all fields work together and engage patients entirely.
The John A. Hartford Foundation recommends interprofessional teamwork across various disciplines within an institution or across institutions such as care delivery organizations or learning institutions. The foundation recommends collaboration because researchers from different backgrounds contribute to an interdisciplinary geriatric study in medicine, social work, and nursing. A multidisciplinary approach to older population care is essential because it has clinical conditions that do not fit neatly in particular disease categories (Reuben et al., 2017). Apart from not fitting neatly in specific disease groups, the older adults also tend to receive care across numerous healthcare settings such as hospitals, physicians' offices, and long-term care facilities. Therefore, the John A. Hartford Foundation Initiative recommends inter-professional teamwork because it provides holistic care to patients.
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Interprofessional teamwork is not a new concept in healthcare. It was started when the Institute of Medicine called for team collaboration in patient care to promote safety and improve patient care. The concept took some time before it was recognized. After most leasing healthcare organization in the US combined and formed Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) in 2009, everything came to light. After creating the IPEC, the World Health Organization, together with other worldwide healthcare organizations, has emphasized on the importance of interprofessional education. This paper seeks to discuss the benefits of an interprofessional team approach when caring for older adults. It will further elaborate on the challenges facing interprofessional teamwork.
Various benefits are associated with interprofessional teamwork. To start with, interprofessional collaboration improves patient care and teamwork. For instance, if a patient is admitted in a healthcare organization having chest pains, the emergency department physician and cardiologist will examine him or her and orders some tests to be done by the radiologist. The radiologist will confirm to both of them what have suspected. Working as a team improves patient care and outcome because each team member has a unique way and knowledge to deal with the patient’s condition. The different professionals in the group can also recognize other symptoms and consider different possibilities. As a team, they can examine patients’ conditions comprehensively and holistically. However, the various health professionals can rarely be seen in one room.
In most cases, health professional share information through EHR because they do not have a system that allow them to communicate directly. Apart from care team meetings, numerous hospitals currently encourage patient-centered and team-based rounds such as bedside nurses, primary doctors, and specialized physicians. This has promoted interprofessional teamwork and patient-centered care in healthcare. Additionally, interprofessional teamwork in caring for older adults reduces medical errors. Communication gaps that range from missed symptoms, medical errors to misdiagnoses can have costly consequences on patients. According to Carney et al. (2019), medical errors contribute about 250,000 deaths annually, and it is one of the leading causes of death in the United States. With various physicians prescribing different medications and nurses delivering those medications, it is easy to see how accidents happen. Extensive researches indicate that interprofessional teamwork reduce deaths and drug reactions that can be prevented. It also maximizes medication dosages when caring for old adults.
In addition to reducing medical errors, interprofessional teamwork enables the patient to start treatment faster. Communication delays most of the time, frustrate patients and waste valuable time, giving the condition enough time to worsen. According to the Joint Commission, failure to communicate develops situations where medical errors can happen ( Kamarajah et al., 2017 ). The errors caused by lack of communication have the potential to cause adverse injuries or unexpected patient deaths. These errors are a pervasive issue in current healthcare organizations. The Joint Commission further indicates that communication failures are the leading cause of treatment delays, wrong-site surgeries, and medical errors.
Communication failure is the second leading cause of operative and postoperative events. It is critically significant for clinicians to have standardized communication tools and develop an environment where health professionals can speak and express their concerns about patients. In this regard, interprofessional teamwork in health care is crucial because it helps health professionals communicate complex information quickly. Interprofessional teamwork also assists healthcare practitioners to make decisions faster and take action immediately. On the other hand, interprofessional teamwork bridges communication gaps and keeps care team members connected. Generally, interprofessional teamwork platform conveys the right information to the right individuals at the right time through secure messaging.
Apart from enabling health professionals to start treatment fast, interprofessional teamwork reduces inefficiencies and associated healthcare costs. Interprofessional collaboration in caring for old adults helps prevent medical errors, enhance patient experiences, and deliver better patient outcomes, ultimately decreasing healthcare costs. The healthcare organization also saves money by eliminating both workflow redundancies and operational inefficiencies ( Illingworth & Chelvanayagam, 2017 ). By enhancing the interprofessional teamwork model between physicians and nurses, the health organization will cut its fall rate by 50 percent, reduce the average length-of-stay, heighten yearly bed turn by approximately 20 percent and increase discharge by 20 percent. Interprofessional teamwork greatly improves surgical start times and prevents medical delays.
Another benefit of interprofessional teamwork is improving the relationships and job satisfaction of staffs. Every team member has his or her knowledge base, philosophy and subculture and when power structures are added to them, some healthcare professionals’ voices are prioritized than others which is not suitable for the patient and staff. The use of interprofessional teamwork acknowledges that every professional plays a significant role in the care team. This sense of community boosts staff retention and recruitment. Inter-professional teamwork also promotes patient-centered care. The primary purpose of healthcare and medical professionals is to offer patients the best care. This can easily be achieved with inter-professional collaboration. Rather than taking turns to care for a specific patient, health professionals should work together to provide care that has sustainable results.
As much as interprofessional teamwork has numerous benefits, it also comes with various limitations and challenges, potential barriers to effective teamwork. One of the obstacles that team members face is the misunderstanding of roles and responsibilities. Differing backgrounds, perspectives, and education between team members can affect decision making. As opined by the Stocker et al (2016), the conflict between team members can affect the care quality. The conflict between team members is caused by poor communication. Communication failure, power struggles, and status differences perceptions can cause errors in care or impede care. In an interprofessional teamwork setting, each member should understand each other’s work and role.
Additionally, all team members should show mutual respect and recognize each other’s area of expertise. Recognizing each team member allows them to freely and openly exchange information in their area of expertise. Therefore, establishing team members’ roles eliminate misunderstandings in the team that arise from unclear roles. The team should also be willing to deal with the barriers because they affect the patient more than anyone. Apart from establishing each team member’s roles, exposing team members to various disciplines helps teams work together more effectively. Appropriate teamwork models and effective communication ought to be implemented in training to put more strength on inter-professional teams' functions.
In summary, interprofessional teamwork plays a significant role in healthcare. The success of interprofessional teamwork can be measured through patient outcomes. Effective interprofessional teamwork leads to readmission rates reduction.
More so, inter-professional teamwork reduces medical errors that result from improper diagnosis and improves patient care by examining patients comprehensively and holistically. Inter-professional teamwork also enables the patient to start treatment faster because it eliminates communication delays that frustrate patients. Likewise, inter-professional teamwork reduces medical inefficiencies and associated healthcare costs. Medical efficiencies and healthcare costs is minimized by preventing errors and improving patient care. Finally, inter-professional teamwork improves staff relationships as well as job satisfaction because it acknowledges everyone in the team and their contributions.
Even though inter-professional teamwork has numerous challenges, it has some challenges and limitations. The challenges of inter-professional collaboration emanate from role and responsibilities, misunderstanding, and poor communication. Team misunderstanding can result in conflicts that affect decision making. For effective inter-professional teamwork, each team member should understand each other’s role and responsibility, respect and recognize each member’s expertise and further exposing team members to various disciplines to help them understand each other and work collaboratively to achieve the set goal. As a result of the various benefits of interprofessional teamwork, healthcare organizations should incorporate them to improve patient outcomes.
References
Carney, P. A., Thayer, E. K., Palmer, R., Galper, A. B., Zierler, B., & Eiff, M. P. (2019). The benefits of interprofessional learning and teamwork in primary care ambulatory training settings. Journal of Interprofessional Education & Practice, 15, 119-126.
Illingworth, P., & Chelvanayagam, S. (2017). The benefits of interprofessional education 10 years on. British Journal of Nursing, 26(14), 813-818.
Kamarajah, S. K., Burns, W. R., Frankel, T. L., Cho, C. S., & Nathan, H. (2017). Validation of the American Joint Commission on Cancer (AJCC) staging system for patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma: a Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) analysis. Annals of surgical oncology , 24 (7), 2023-2030.
Reuben, D. B., Kaplan, D. B., van der Willik, O., & O Brien ‐ Suric, N. (2017). John A. Hartford Foundation Centers of Excellence program: history, impact, and legacy. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 65(7), 1396-1400.
Stocker, M., Pilgrim, S. B., Burmester, M., Allen, M. L., & Gijselaers, W. H. (2016). Interprofessional team management in pediatric critical care: some challenges and possible solutions. Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare , 9 , 47.
