TEAMWORK AND COLLABORATION
| Subject: | 💭 Psychology |
| Type: | Analytical Essay |
| Pages: | 2 |
| Word count: | 717 |
| Topics: | Teamwork, Communication, Nursing, 🏆 Career Goals |
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In order to improve patient outcomes and ensuring that many lives are saved, nurses and physicians working together toward a common goal in the nursing environment is crucial. As a matter of fact, effective collaboration has now been identified as one of the essential factors needed for quality patient outcomes and care. But while existing research and theoretical understanding of the same still remains underdeveloped, (Hood, & Leddy, 2014) observes that there is an increased realization of the need to incorporate effective collaboration in the nursing environment. But one thing that is for sure is the fact, that nurse- physicians collaboration or a lack of thereof, all proceeds to impact both the patients and care providers in different ways, making the case for the need of collaboration between nurses and physicians so as to overcome existing barriers to nursing-physician teamwork collaboration efforts.
Effective clinical practice involves several instances where critical information must not only be communicated but communicated in the right way and in a timely manner. To achieve that, team collaboration is a must. This is always the case as when practitioners are not communicating between themselves, patient safety is always at risk. In the nursing healthcare setup, lack of communication proceeds to create a situation where medical errors can easily occurs, some of which may end up having catastrophic impacts. As a matter of fact, medicals errors that come by as a result of failure in communication is one of the biggest problems in nursing (Hood, & Leddy, 2014). This is why collaboration between physician and nurses is increasing becoming important and being taken seriously. Institutions that have improved working environments for nurse- physicians working together have been found to have higher satisfaction and better outcomes among patients. The good thing is the fact that today working together towards a common goal is being taken as an empirically derived theory that can effectively be used to guide education and practice in the nursing setup with the purpose of improving patient outcomes while being able to save lives and money in the process.
But having said that, there exists certain barriers to nurse-physician collaboration that may proceed to prevent collaboration from occurring. One such barrier surfaces in the form of patriarchal relationship between physician and nurses where subordination of nurses can create bigger problem drawing nurses and physician to be far apart (Fewster-Thuente, 2015). Other barriers include, lack of proximity, lack of interpersonal education as well as problem in locating a provider within a given education. Differences in perceptions when it comes to collaboration also remains a serious barrier in nurse-physician collaboration efforts.
Overcoming the barriers that exists to nurse-physician collaboration is a must as failure to which will end up impacting patient outcomes in a more negative way. This is why healthcare stakeholders are on the verge of employing various interventions that are aimed at teaching providers how to collaborate. The first thing that need to be done to overcome the barriers is knowing how to find the right person as knowing where the providers are in away accelerates the process which comes in handy especially in emergency situation (Fewster-Thuente, 2015). Locating providers easily and as quickly as possible is very crucial to effective collaboration. At the same time, knowing who to talk to will help overcomes the communication barriers. In certain situations, a patient may not be comfortable with a given physician and knowing the right person for the job would come in handy (Fewster-Thuente, 2015). At the same time, once the providers know who to talk to and how to reach them, coming together between the parties will help improve collaboration. Exchanging ideas and information with the purpose of creating harmony in the nursing environment will also help in improving efforts for collaboration.
As seen above, there is a need for nurses and physicians to work together so as to be in a good position to achieve their patient’s goals. To do so, they need to over existing collaborative barriers such as lack of interdisciplinary knowledge and change their perception on the need for collaboration. In so doing, both nurses and physicians will be able to overcome nay communicate barriers ensuring that they exist a good working relationship between themselves which will mean that they will be able to address the needs of their patients in the most effective way.
- Fewster-Thuente, L. (2015). Working Together Toward a Common Goal: A Grounded Theory of Nurse-Physician Collaboration. Medsurg Nurs., 356-362.
- Hood, L., & Leddy, S. (2014). Leddy & Pepper’s conceptual bases of professional nursing (1st ed., pp. 85-88, 101-105). Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer Health | Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Offered for reference purposes only.