Reflective practices are crucial to personal and professional development. Individuals. Nurses use reflection to evaluate their experiences and improve future practices. Interprofessional collaboration refers to activities that incorporate the perspectives of various disciplines and professionals from these disciplines to achieve the desired outcome. Understanding the significance of interprofessional collaboration is significant to nurses as it assists them in collaborating with others. This video reflection revisits an interprofessional collaboration experience and explains leadership and collaboration strategies that can be used to improve interprofessional collaboration goal achievement and team cohesion.
Interprofessional approaches to problem-solving are widely applied in healthcare, and my workplace is not left behind. During the covid-19, the facility was badly hit and lost clients quickly. Patients were scared to come to the hospital, and the number of emergency department visits was rising due to the increasing number of complicated cases, as people feared seeking services early. The directives on handling the in-patient visits were primarily from the management and the government, but the pressure was slowly growing out of control.
The hospital management could not keep up with the changes and set a task force whose role was to evaluate the new change and implement interventions to ensure the hospital stayed functional and vital services were not crippled during the pandemic. The team comprised a representative of all professionals and the executive leadership team members, making up to 30 members before being reduced to 15. I happened to be on the team, and we were relieved of some of our duties to focus on the issue at hand.
The team developed many interventions by addressing the disease’s effects and how they can be managed. Among the interventions developed and implemented with great success were telehealth services integration, home health extension program expansion, virtual assistance exercises (the fitness center was physically inaccessible), handwashing stations, protective gear/ equipment, and other change interventions.
The team also helped the staff get acquitted with the changes, including staff education for better outcomes. Interprofessional collaboration activity failed in several ways. Collaborating was difficult because the number maintained was very large initially, and decisions took exceedingly long to get done. A large number of professionals also increased the intensity of the arguments, and there were many inactive members, leaving only a few professionals to contribute to the team.
Poor collaboration leads to time wastage due to disengagement and accountability hence wastage of time, an important resource in healthcare. McLaney et al. (2022) note that poor interprofessional collaboration delays or completely hinders innovation interventions because the involved professionals cannot decide. Poor collaboration leads to conflict and negatively impacts staff morale and cohesion. Burgess et al. (2020) state that teams with poor collaboration do not make unanimous decisions, or some parties are forced to make decisions because agreeing is a problem.
Individuals’ conflicts can lead to opposition of ideas, yet they are viable and usable. Poor collaboration also contributed to low employee engagement, underutilizing the institution’s human resources. Collaboration is necessary for quality outcomes. According to Blakeney et al. (2019), collaboration produces quality outcomes and patient safety and stimulates innovation in healthcare, and thus facilitation of interprofessional collaboration should be prioritized.
There are various leadership strategies to enhance the achievement of goals in an interprofessional team. The first intervention is developing clear goals and communicating them. For unity of direction, all members must understand the role of interprofessional collaboration and how to contribute. Folkman et al. (2019) note that employing an interprofessional approach to care stimulates and encourages professionals to participate in professional collaboration. Leaders decide the models of care in a facility, and investing in this model can greatly influence success in interprofessional collaboration.
Interprofessional approaches to care include team nursing and team approach to care, where professionals are assigned to patients as a team. Rewarding and recognizing collaboration also promotes interprofessional collaboration. Varpio and Teunisen (2020) note that in healthcare institutions that use the team approach to care, rewarding and recognizing teams with the best performance can help promote interprofessional collaboration in the faci
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