There are many complexities when working with diverse health care professional groups. People often underestimate the interprofessional coordination challenges, yet they demand advanced interprofessional communication skills and sensitivity to cultural and professional differences. The training and learning of the interprofessional groups is very limited in the educational programs for health professionals, with each group, learning separately from other healthcare groups and consumers. Most health professionals are unable to take care of complex health care issues which demand collaboration. Thus, enhancing the understanding of strategic communication skills among interprofessional healthcare teams improves the teams’ performance. The relational health communication competence and health outcomes model forms the basis of this paper, offering a description of the need for collaborative interprofessional healthcare practices to promote positive healthcare outcomes.
Components of Effective Interpersonal Communication
Making Personal Connections
The existence of healthy interpersonal relationships leads to an effective interpersonal communication among healthcare professionals. As such, healthcare professionals should make meaningful relationships among themselves to allow them to carry out their clinical roles more efficiently and ensure that they keep their patients engaged during care. According to Foronda et al. (2016), these relationships are accomplished by making minor changes in health professionals’ workflow to ensure the integration of processes. Once processes are integrated, it enables for the specialization of work, leading to enhanced productivity.
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Patience and Awareness
Patience is an element that is important in clinical settings for it improves service delivery. Effective healthcare professionals should deliver information in a way that calms the patients without causing agitations or anxiety. This interpersonal communication element helps the health care professionals reassure the patients and the demanding stakeholders that any information will be communicated as soon as it is received (Hood et al., 2014). It is also most applicable when channeling patient information in cases where the outcome is undesirable. Interpersonal communication has been frequently used to maintain trusted and corporative relationships with patients.
Conflict Resolution
Conflicts require one to take a disruptive undertone following interpersonal skills. The health care professionals might make use of conflict as a positive opportunity for learning. Conflicts might be a result from different circumstances, including opposing beliefs and lack of cooperation. Interpersonal communication skills help solve interpersonal conflicts that might result from differing perspectives, thus coming up with a genuine resolution. According to Weiss et al. (2015), addressing and resolving issues professionally requires the ability to resolve conflicts through interpersonal communication, which is an indication of maturity. Health professionals should use logic and also make sure that they recognize emotional factors in critical decision-making. The element of conflict resolution enhances interpersonal communication among the clinicians.
Importance of Interprofessional Collaboration
Interprofessional collaboration is essential in health care for a number of reasons. First, it helps create a collaborative culture by promoting the use of communication strategies and technology to support the different healthcare professional teams. In turn, interprofessional collaboration improves patient care and outcomes (Weiss et al., 2015). Interprofessional collaboration through care team meetings within health care settings encourages patient-centered and team-based rounds, which foster better health outcomes. Also, interprofessional collaboration promotes the use of communication technology, allowing the care teams to collaborate and communicate securely at the point of care. According to Liu et al. (2018), interprofessional collaboration in healthcare also prevents medical errors, thus improving patients’ experience. It also aids in delivering better patient outcomes and reducing health care costs. It also helps the healthcare setting save money by eradicating the redundancies in workflow and other operational inefficiencies. Lastly, the improvement of the interprofessional collaboration model cuts the hospital fall rate. As a result, it increases the number of discharges and significantly increases surgical start times, and prevents delays.
Application of Components of Interpersonal Communication to Interprofessional Collaboration
Problem-solving and critical-thinking are elements of interpersonal communication useful in health care settings. First, they are also crucial for boosting interprofessional collaboration since health professionals come together to find answers as they are responsible for solving the problems that arise. Foronda et al. (2018) assert that problems are a part of life and can challenge health professionals’ ability to optimize care. Therefore, for effective interpersonal communication among healthcare professionals, one has to leverage the collective knowledge of interprofessionals through interprofessional collaboration. It enables the health care professionals, including the nurses, to leverage their talents and find creative ways of solving the problems that arise. With an open mind to interprofessional collaboration among clinicians, it is easy to engage each other in critical-thinking and carefully examining the different available options. Working collaboratively with others allows for devising the practical and logical strategies of solving problems, and this can only be possible if there is effective interpersonal communication. Confidence is another component of interpersonal communication that must be present to promote interprofessional collaboration among healthcare professionals (Matziou et al., 2014). This competence gives the health care professionals confidence and provides them with expert knowledge and in turn, help influence their peers and followers by acting as role models.
Strategies to Promote Interprofessional Collaboration
Increasing the Effectiveness of Communication
The entire healthcare system is built upon communicating the patients’ needs to the appropriate service providers. In certain instances, communication takes place in multilingual environments. Interprofessional collaboration cannot be easily achieved in a system that has overwhelming communication loopholes. Liu et al. (2018) noted that effective communication among healthcare professionals creates an interprofessional team that works together in harmony, thus increasing the collaboration efforts. Communication involves aspects such as articulating thoughts and ideas using oral, non-verbal, and written modes. Other than that, team members must be able to listen attentively to decipher meaning and to express themselves articulately to inform others. Therefore, nurses and other health practitioners should advocate for enhanced communication for there to be interprofessional collaboration.
Promoting Mutual Respect and Trust
Mutual respect and trust between healthcare providers have a long-term effect on their collaboration. These two values help to change the organizational culture. Mutual respect and trust also enable health care professionals to hold their peers accountable. Mututual respect and trust only occur among the members who have formed an interprofessional team (Weiss et al., 2015). These health care professionals might have power and autonomy disparities due to their different levels of professional hierarchy and education. Through collaboration, it is only through respect and trust that these health care professionals can share their innovative solutions for certain problems or contribute to the decision-making process.
Effective Strategies for Building Interprofessional Teams
Team-Oriented Goal Setting
The healthcare system requires collaborative efforts among patients and service providers. There is a need to create definitive goals to produce this outcome among interprofessional teams in the healthcare setting. Therefore, healthcare management should communicate some written policies to establish the objectives and accountability measures for interprofessional teams’ formation to enhance organizational productivity. According to Hood et al. (2014), these objectives will have to incorporate interprofessional teams’ influence to deliver positive and desired outcomes. Integrating this aspect will also foster an environment where the team members will think about service delivery from the patients’ perspective. This practice will help promote participation, creating a work setting where all team members effectively contribute to positive health outcomes.
Goal-Setting
For an organization to minimize errors, it must have measurable goals. To concurrently increase patient satisfaction, there must be an effective interprofessional team working towards a common goal. According to Liu et al. (2018), health care settings make the practice more relevant when they evolve their processes without working in a traditional pattern. In this case, healthcare organizations need to set a bar in their goals, increasing the team members’ focus to come together and be committed to achieving the goals. In this case, the healthcare professionals will be able to improve the team’s performance by establishing growth expectations (Weiss et al., 2015). The element of goal-setting plays a major role when working in a group of professionals. In this case, one must show the willingness and flexibility to make comprises that can help the team attain a common goal. Even when decisions are shared, there must be the elements of shared responsibility and valuing of other team members’ contribution.
Improving Cultural Competence
Cultural competence involves the ability of organizations to deliver effective health care services to meet the patients’ social and cultural needs. According to Matziou et al. (2014), the increased diversity of nations has given healthcare providers opportunities to create and deliver culturally competent services. A team of professionals who are culturally competent can be useful for improving health outcomes and the quality of care, thus eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities. Several strategies can be used to move health care systems towards the set goals, including the provision of relevant training on cultural competence and other cross-cultural issues (Weiss et al., 2015). Cultural competence can also be promoted by creating policies that reduce the administrative and linguistic barrier to patient care.
Conclusion
Interprofessional health care teams act as part of the modern healthcare system. A team of interdependent healthcare providers shares the necessary expertise when making complex and other important healthcare decisions. An effective healthcare professional team promotes care coordination among the specialists, thus delivering the best possible care. Additionally, effective interpersonal communication is crucial for building respectful, meaningful, and cooperative care. It is significant for interprofessional teams to perform their functions while maintaining the stipulated goals and minimizing the dysfunctional tasks. Influential leaders need to share relevant information and manage work-related conflicts through interpersonal communication skills to demonstrate openness and responsiveness to new ideas.
References
Foronda, C., MacWilliams, B., & McArthur, E. (2016). Interprofessional communication in healthcare: An integrative review. Nurse Education in Practice, 19 , 36-40. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.nepr.2016.04.005
Hood, K., Cant, R., Leech, M., Baulch, J., & Gilbee, A. (2014). Trying on the professional self: nursing students’ perceptions of learning about roles, identity and teamwork in an interprofessional clinical placement. Applied Nursing Research, 27 (2), 109-114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apnr.2013.07.003
Liu, X. L., Zahrt, D. M., & Simms, M. D. (2018). An interprofessional team approach to the differential diagnosis of children with language disorders. Pediatric Clinics, 65 (1), 73-90. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pcl.2017.08.022
Matziou, V., Vlahioti, E., Perdikaris, P., Matziou, T., Megapanou, E., & Petsios, K. (2014). Physician and nursing perceptions concerning interprofessional communication and collaboration. Journal of Interprofessional Care , 28 (6), 526-533. https://doi.org/10.3109/13561820.2014.934338
Weiss, S. A., Tappen, R. M., & Grimley, K. (2015). Essentials of nursing leadership & management (6th edition). FA Davis.
