Collaborative Nursing Practices

To accommodate for these challenges, the Canadian Nurses Association [CNA]

Kaiser Permanente (KP) was founded in 1945 at the height of the Great Depression (Kaiser Permanente, 2017a). Since their humble beginnings KP has strived to provide the best care possible for their patients and improve on health for their members. Kaiser has grown from a small hospital, to a large foundation by making appropriate changes and using strategic planning to ensure members receive the health care they need in terms of quality and safety. One method of strategic planning KP uses is appreciative inquiry, a method and philosophy that identifies when the facility functions at its best and builds from those situations to create a vision of the future and work towards that vision (McNamara, n.d).

The Ontario Public Health Association creates a cohesive workplace that helps to support each other and the clients. (Public Health Ontario, 2012)

At this time, the province’s ratio of 72 nurses to every 100,000 people lags behind the nation’s average of 83 nurses to every 100,000 Canadians. As per the Canadian Nurses Association prediction, there is a staggering demand of 60,000 nurses that is needed by the year 2022. With continuously emerging trends in healthcare services, Ontario has become the top dream destination for patient care providers from all over the world. Plenty of job opportunities, best pay packages, government support, continuing education for specialization, cost of living and a rewarding career brings internationally educated nurses to Ontario to shape up their future. Ontario

In an effort to create more efficient and effective health care services, decision makers and organizational leaders have looked to the implementation of interprofessional healthcare teams to deliver care together as opposed to the traditional model of healthcare delivery one that sees practitioners working alone in silos (Tomblin Murphy, Alder, MacKenzie & Rigby, 2010; Weinberg, Cooney-Miner, Perloff, Babington, & Avgar, 2011). In 2008, the World Health Organization (WHO) Study Group on Interprofessional Education (IPE) and Collaborative Practice (IPC) created a set of definitions to assist the health researchers, educators, policy developers, decision makers and others in developing IPE and IPC in their jurisdictions to both build capacity

An example of the importance of interprofessional training is that when a physical therapist works with a patient in the hospital. If the patient is in too much pain or is sleepy from the medication the physical therapist will not be able to accomplish much. However, if the physical therapist contacts the nurses beforehand and informs them of the time he will arrive to work with a patient, the nurse could make accommodations. This would allow the patient to accomplish the physical therapist’s intended tasks for the day and the patient’s recovery time could decrease exponentially. Many patient’s care relies on their health care team effectively cooperating and acting as a cohesive unit for the patient to experience optimal

The type of model of nursing care delivery used on my unit is a team nursing model. I am currently working on a 50-bed orthopedic unit in a level one trauma center. The unit is divided into 2 areas. One of the sides is for trauma patients and the other one is for elective surgical patients. One nurse assumes the charge nurse duties, including making staff assignments, managing call-outs, communicating with the patient care coordinator, and supervises problems and concerns for both areas of the unit.

Nurse’s role has a unique contribution in the interprofessional team. The interprofessional team are group of individuals in a various healthcare disciplines communicating and working together towards common goals to provide quality, individualized care for patients. Each team members from different profession and occupation collaborates, supports, enhances, and provides knowledge, skills, and attitudes to coordinate processes and interventions. Nurse’s offers specialized service to society to meet the health care needs of their clients.

Collaboration among health care professionals is defined as assuming complementary roles and cooperatively working together, sharing responsibility for problem solving and making decisions to formulate and carry out plans for patient care. (Fagin, 2008). In any field of health care where physicians and nurses interact with one another for the purpose of quality patient care, it is vital for them to work together as one and understand the needs of their patients as well as each other’s roles and responsibilities. In short, teamwork should prevail for excellent patient service. Therefore, being in full partnership as a nurse with the physician and other healthcare professional is another recommendation that is applied by the RWJ-IOM report.

An Interprofessional health care team is a group of health providers from different professions working together to reach a common goal to meet the needs of a patient. It is the combination of using knowledge, skills, and value to work together with other healthcare members, with patients, their family, and the communities to improve the patient’s health outcomes. Teamwork is the fundamental to the delivery of nursing care and to their ethical commitment to patients. As healthcare delivery changes to become more interconnected, the more important in coordinating the care between physician, nurses, social workers, and other disciplines has become. For example, physicians are trained to assume responsibility for decisions; however, since chronic care, geriatrics, mental health and palliative care are the area where patient’s need are so complex, interprofressional teams have become necessary to provide the full range of care.

High quality, accessible, and patient care which is considered to be patient-centered is crucial for quick and quality recovery (Wilkinson, 2012). Plans require visions that involve the creation of interprofessional competencies by students who are planning to take up nursing as their profession. Providing such skills to students will ensure that they get into the workforce ready to engage in the effective creation of teamwork and even team-based care (Eastman, 2010). My current station of work is an example where continuing competence is to build on each professional nurse. They are expected to engage in interdisciplinary collaboration so as to ensure best practices are adhered to.

As a future practitioner, using the SOAP format assist in developing, organize, a consistent, and uniform methods of developing several treatment measures. The notes encounter a precise detail of the patient visit whether inpatient or outpatient, continuing treatment can be followed by the next practitioner taking over patient care. “The comprehensive H&P is typically obtained when a provider sees a patient for the first time in a general medical setting, or when the patient is admitted to the hospital” (Sullivan, 2012). Collaboration is essential throughout the treatment process, and follow-up is necessary to the regimen.

Reflecting on the past seven weeks I have acquired countless knowledge, which I will use to further strengthen my profession as an Advanced Practice Nurse. The course allowed me to think beyond my current practice knowledge and acquired innovative ways to evaluate the situation at hand. The learning objective in program outcome four helps set standards that I will use to guide my clinical practice to meet various healthcare needs. Using the case studies has helped to further enhance my knowledge on disease physiological state, using differential diagnosis, disease manifestations, and clinical presentation. It has also taught me the skills on how to differentiate between similar diagnoses to properly identify the problem and treat the patients.

For example, in the health care provider field, the nurses should collaborate with the other health care professional like the doctor, pharmacist, physiotherapy or the radiography in order to achieve the common goal which for the patient’s

Working in a hospital setting with a team that has members from many disciplines can sometimes lead to issues that are easily solved if only they are acknowledged. Some of the major issues within IP care are philosophical differences, disparity in power amongst the health care professionals (HCP), communication between the members, and inexperience in team working. The solutions that are mentioned in the following paragraphs are applicable in general and are not specific to certain cases, hence, the solutions do not apply to every