The health care profession requires the involvement of patients, families and the diverse medical team that consist of specialized professionals. The participation of all these team members is paramount to enhance cooperative and coordinated services that facilitate outstanding care. As a result, clinical decision making is a multifaceted process that emphasizes individual collaboration rather than focusing on making defined choices when one is faced with limited choices (Mahdizadeh et al., 2015). Therefore, health professionals are expected to take part in decision-making processes that are influenced by various foci including; medical intervention, diagnosis, interaction and intervention. Clinical professionals are required to use evidence-based literature to make informed decisions while taking into account the different variables and individuals that are involved in the given context. Consequently, inter-professional collaborative teamwork is essential in clinical decision making due to the situations of uncertainty that health care professionals face.
Collaboration among health care professionals is defined as the ability their capability to take up complementary roles that exist within a team effectively cooperate, divide responsibilities for problem-solving, and come to a consensus on what needs to be done to provide quality patient care and services (Morley and Cashell, 2017). Inter-professional collaboration and cooperation between nurses, physicians and other health care professionals enhance collective awareness about each others’ clinical knowledge and skills. As a result, this facilitates continued improvements in the decision-making process thus contributing to quality patient care and services. Additionally, by improving patient care, inter-professional collaboration increases doctors and nurses’ job satisfaction, reduces medical costs and clinical errors and increases patients’ positive outcome. The model of collaboration between physician and nurses enhances teamwork since it creates a conducive environment for learning through; openness, respect, trust and active discussion.
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Health care collaboration between professional teams may increase patient education and engagement during their care process. This is because patients become more confident in their health practitioners leading to positive behavioral changes such as; effective communication between the patient and their physicians, patient involvement in the decision-making process, and effective patient participation in self-care.
When health professionals are relaying information to patients, the approaches used during this process are reliable, receptive, and ensure there is mutual understanding – this will ensure that patients can partake in the decisions made about their management plan. Morley and Cashell (2017) assert that patients ought to be the main actors in the medical decision-making process whereas the health care professionals should assume the supportive role. Moreover, the learning needs of patient vary – thus, it is essential for the health care professionals to coordinate with each other and identify effective methods that are suitable for educating and instructing patients through proper and consistent approaches. This is a collaborative task between the interdisciplinary team that informs on how, when and who the information is conveyed.
The relationship established between patients and clinicians facilitate interactions that are vital to the inter-professional team. These interactions involve developing a communication platform that promotes shared values, goals, and expectations. Additionally, collaborative interactions between patients and clinicians enhance trust by creating a good rapport which contributes to openness, successful negotiations and commitment to identified medical care approaches (Mahdizadeh et al., 2015). Collaboration has positive outcomes on patient safety by reducing medical errors in scenarios whereby the staff has been trained work safety measures, cooperation and work in coordinated ways to eliminate gaps in quality assurance approaches. According to Morley and Cashell (2017) quality assurance measures are considered to be dependent on various factors that are determined by the work environment such as; organizational culture, teamwork, and learning – which influence the patients and their families’ perspective of the care offered to them.
Collaborative team work is also beneficial to staff members and a health care organization. This is because; organizations that foster a collaborative culture improve quality and safety – which leads to staff satisfaction and retention. Additionally, the staff is more likely to have perceptions of empowerment and recognition because collaborative teams generate a horizontal leadership structure as opposed to a hierarchical structure. Moreover, collaborative teams foster open and inclusive communication systems, promote greater levels of understanding, mutual respect, and appreciation of each other's skills and talents. Therefore, collaborative teams generate high performance, are innovative, have increased initiative and performance – by increasing staff engagement and minimize absenteeism (Morley and Cashell, 2017). A multidisciplinary collaborative team results in a more competitive and efficient work environment within an organization.
Lack of a multidisciplinary collaboration between health care professionals contributes to poor communication channels that create room for medical errors to occur. When medical errors occur, they have the capability of causing severe injury or death which could have been avoided. In health organizations whereby there is no collaboration and cooperation between the health workers, there is communication failure that creates pervasive issues (Steihaug et al., 2016). As a result, the quality of patient care and service is compromised since there are high chances of delayed treatment and wrong diagnoses. Instances where information is not communicated accurately, the patient’s safety is at risk – since data is likely to be misinterpreted, unclear and critical information about a patient’s treatment may be left out. Additionally, lack of collaboration minimizes the various aspects of complementary roles which allow staff members to trust, respect and appreciate each other – leading to weak teamwork. This may further contribute to the lack of employee satisfaction, increase absenteeism and employee turnover and result in poor organizational performance.
Barriers to inter-professional collaboration among health care workers contribute to poor performance and compromise of the quality of care and services provided to patients. Lack of knowledge and appreciation of health care professional roles may lead to cases of mistrust and lack of respect – which prevent the staff from achieving a multidisciplinary collaboration (Steihaug et al., 2016). Secondly, when employees lack clearly articulated, shared and measurable goals they fail to have appropriate and common mechanisms to guide their performance. Therefore, it becomes challenging for a team to cooperate towards achieving the same purpose. Thirdly, lack of effective training in inter-professional collaboration makes it challenging for staff members to recognize effective and appropriate teamwork approaches and behaviors.
Pediatric primary care requires specialized medical services offered by physicians that have acquired additional training and expertise in their areas. Therefore to promote collaboration between health care professionals in the field, it is important to establish a unifying philosophy that revolves around the primary care of the patient (Stille et al., 2017). This way, the physicians are committed to providing quality care that is based on a common philosophy. Physicians in paediatrics should also commit to designing shared goals of collaboration to enhance attributes of trust, respect and understanding among them. In pediatric primary care, the professionals should be willing to share responsibilities when it comes to patient care. Sharing responsibilities will ensure that the professionals collaborate and cooperate to improve patient outcome (Stille et al., 2017). In addition to this, the professionals should establish effective mechanisms of developing and negotiating their objectives and roles over a given period. This approach will allow the team members to implement ways that enable them to overcome collaborative barriers. Lastly, pediatric primary care physicians should establish practical methods of resolving conflicts between staff members.
Nurses can promote professional collaboration participating in training sessions that educate them on the diverse role within the health care facility. This will allow the nurses and other health caregivers to empathize with the challenges that their colleagues encounter – which will strengthen the bond shared between them. Nurses can encourage multidisciplinary rounds which will enhance communication among the staff members and between their patients. The multidisciplinary rounds provide an opportunity for the patients and clinicians to interact and discuss patient's goals and expected outcomes. In addition to this, multidisciplinary rounds promote inter-professional collaboration as each team is provided with the opportunity to hold discussions and identify best treatment alternatives for a patient.
Multidisciplinary collaboration between nurses-physicians and patients-clinicians is essential to enhance patient outcome and physician performance. Clinical collaboration plays a significant role in the quality of services received by a patient, organizational performance and patient and physician perception of the health care roles. The outcomes of inter-professional collaboration include; health care professional satisfaction reduced clinical errors, quality assurance control, patient safety and improved organizational performance. An effective multidisciplinary collaboration occurs among physicians and nurses; patients, patient relatives and the physician; and physician, nurses and the organization.
References
Mahdizadeh, M., Heydari, A., & Karimi Moonaghi, H. (2015). Clinical Interdisciplinary Collaboration Models and Frameworks From Similarities to Differences: A Systematic Review. Global journal of health science , 7 (6), 170-80. doi:10.5539/gjhs.v7n6p170
Morley, L. and Cashell, A. (2017). Collaboration in Health Care. Journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences , 48 207-216. Retrieved from: https://www.jmirs.org/article/S1939-8654(16)30117-5/pdf
Steihaug, S., Johannessen, A. K., Ådnanes, M., Paulsen, B., & Mannion, R. (2016). Challenges in Achieving Collaboration in Clinical Practice: The Case of Norwegian Health Care. International journal of integrated care , 16 (3), 3. doi:10.5334/ijic.2217
Stille, C, Honigfeld, L., Heitlinger, L., Kuo, D. and Werner, E. (2017).The Pediatric Primary Care-Specialist Interface: A Call For Action. The Journal of Pediatrics, Volume 187 , 303 – 308. Retrieved from: https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(17)30601-7/fulltext
