Collaborative care is a healthcare approach which focuses on improving patient outcomes by means of inter-professional cooperation. The cooperation mainly includes a primary care team working alongside allied health professionals, mental health professionals, physiotherapists, and other medical specialists. Effective collaboration embraces patient centeredness whereby healthcare providers, patients, and families are all active in the treatment process hence an improved quality outcome, patient safety, patient experience and proper usage of resources. It therefore necessitates an analysis on the roles of nurses in the collaborative care model as a medical intervention.
Surprisingly, nurses are the only healthcare professionals trained to comprehend the roles of other clinical professionals. The training provided to the nurses lays a strong foundation for a successful collaboration. Because effective communication is crucial in a practical collaborative care plan, nurses are well trained to have empathy, adaptability and communication skills which make them exceptional members and leaders in a care team. Nurses’ ability to recognize and assess a patient’s emotional, clinical and social needs assists in the creation of attention towards resource allocation and the creation of patient-focused collaborative care plan. As nurses offer direct patient care all the way, they are able to professionally view how care should be provided. In addition, nurses act as role models by being transparent in their opinion about patient care in a given healthcare setting with their team members (Reeves et al., 2017).
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Each person has a different personality from the other, a map or a mental model that creates a wide range of assumptions and values from things experienced. A sense of the world is made through this mental model by making selections of information on the basis of skill, experience, knowledge, and values. Collaboration is based on the mental model where there is the sharing of various ideas or values between team members. In order to make collaborative efforts explicitly conscious, evaluation of personal goals and values from other people, and the knowledge of other mental modes is crucial (Gardner, 2005). Consequently, one should be conversant with the individual professional goals and values that you are able to accomplish and the things you are not able to. It is simply knowing about your actions and values, for instance, nurses are professionally trained to communicate with patients and so collaboration will proceed in a mental model for communication.
Nurses are skilled to make certain that patients’ nutritional needs are met and it is their responsibility to provide nutrition advice. On the other hand, it is an obligation for the nutritionists and dietitians to maintain ideal nutrition for their clients, however, they are not able to meet the ever-growing needs for the public especially the aged. To offer and guarantee high-quality care, a multidisciplinary team is important in meeting the clients’ nutritional demands. Nurses working at both primary and secondary care may have inadequate knowledge on nutrition but with the collaboration of dietitians and nutritionists, there is the improvement of patients’ health outcome hence the value for team approach (Xu, 2017).
Collaborative nursing has allowed nurses with distinctive levels of expertise to perform their duties efficiently by reducing missed care and taking advantage of knowledge from team members. In conclusion, Collaborative care has continuously proven to be of great importance to the patients, nurses and the general healthcare teams. This is as a result of the promotion of patient safety and the provision of insight and valued healthcare experience to nurses.
References
Gardner, D. (2005). “Ten Lessons in Collaboration” . OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing . Vol. 10 No. 1, Manuscript 1.
Reeves, S., Pelone, F., Harrison, R., Goldman, J., & Zwarenstein, M. (2017). Interprofessional collaboration to improve professional practice and healthcare outcomes. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews , (6).
Xu, X., Parker, D., Ferguson, C., Hickman L. (2017). Where is the nurse in nutritional care? Contemporary Nurse, 53:3 630-639.
