The Essay Explores The Impact Of Interprofessional Working On Service User Experiences.

Efficient care through interprofessional working

Discuss how service user experiences are influenced by interprofessional working?

Efficient care is considered as the result of inter-professional working. Professional working in a team offer care that is constructed to meet the requirements of the patient. The idea of professional working is promoted by the NHS program (Clifton, Dale & Bradshaw, 2006). Professional working in nursing aimed to generate a patient focused service, supporting health care personnel to work collaboratively to meet patients’ requirements. This modified attitude towards the heath care was influential in shaping the way where inter-professional working is observed and adopted today (Cook & Hyrkäs, 2010). Scientist Barr has pointed out that inter-professional working helps professional benefits. Inter-professional working includes knowledge sharing and chances to experience work areas outside ones individual remit. It is said that personnel may have developed job satisfaction levels and raised confidence levels in managing with complicated conditions. Inter-professional learning is also termed as collaborative learning to facilitate collaborative practice.

Inter-professional working is challenging exceptionally in the nursing profession and is obviously not a simple idea for the healthcare personnel to adopt. Many scientists have argued that inter-professional working may not being offered to the service consumers within hospitals because healthcare personnel misunderstood education, policies and research about inter-professional working (Freeth, 2014). This is because of lack of training from the administrators and support, which managers need to include personnel in transformations within practice and the involvement, should facilitate cooperation.

It is apparent that inter-professional working improves the care service and patient health. In nursing sectors it can be said that each patient has their own individual needs (Kinnison, 2014). Therefore, the cares that need to be provided are always patient centered to meet the individual patient needs.

Patient care involves participation of health care professionals from different expertise and they collaboratively should serve their patient in order to serve their patient in a better way (Mabbott, 2013). This type of approach is known as working in a multidisciplinary team.

This can be illustrated with an example: suppose, a patient is admitted in a hospital, who has undergone a cardiac surgery. The patient is diabetic, obese and hypertensive. To treat this particular patient inter-personal working is of utmost important to reduce the patient’s hospital stay for this patient and also to serve this patient in a better way in terms of health care service. If this case is considered then it should be mentioned that to take care of her cardiac complication a cardiologist or cardiac surgeon is appointed. To take care of her hypertension a general medicine doctor need to be appointed (Kinnison, 2014). She is obese so her diet should be properly structured and for that a dietician should be appointed and finally surgical nurses and nursing aides should also be appointed to deliver her with proper care service. 

So it is clear that each and individual patient has their respective care needs, which is changing each and every moment. But the collaborative care is consistent (Jones, 2007). Whatever the case it is the health care personnel should work together to facilitate quality care and serve the care consumers in a better way to improve their health quality.

Challenges of interprofessional working in nursing

Inter-professional working increases the level of understanding of various perspectives. Collaborative working includes experienced and fresher nursing professionals. So, while working with the senior and experienced personnel the inexperienced or less experienced nurses get the opportunity to learn from their seniors. The junior nurses should have the keenness to learn from their seniors or mentors regarding their respective nursing practice. The experienced personnel should also cooperate with them in order to correctly make them understand and clarify their quarries (Hood, 2012). This in turn will definitely give a good and effective outcome. In this case the service users can experience good care service from the health care team members. The care delivered in this way is systematic, effective and less time consuming (Cacchione, 2008).  In this way the inexperienced care professionals can learn about different things, like they should not use jargons while communicating with their care consumers or how they should communicate with their clients, why they should keep in mind regarding their cultural background and depend on that how they need to speak to their care consumers and so on (Sharma & Klocke, 2014). Role overlap is noted to present in inter-professional working, nevertheless, the role protection issue need to be considered as an obstruction to inter-professional working.  It is founded that nursing professionals are highly protective regarding their position in intermediate care and it is the responsibility of the nurse to take the liability for patients’ medical management and observe therapy requirements within the group.

From inter-personal working the professionals become more aware about collaborative work and become more capable to collaborate that increase the service quality, safety level and reduce the risk of mistakes (Lowe & O'Hara, 2000). Working in a team increases the knowledge of the roles of other professionals and help them to relate those functions with personal role. Thus, the professionals can understand the knowledge gaps and increase the capability to correlate across professional boundaries. If there is a poor collaboration within a health care set up, it will definitely affect the care delivery process for a client and thus this can immensely affect the service users and in turn their health (Hassmiller & Goodman, 2011). Therefore, if a health care set up is following an inter-professional working then the care consumers of that care set up will definitely experience good and effective health outcomes. If the professionals of health care set up are not working collaboratively then the care consumes of that care facility will definitely experience bad and ineffective health outcomes.

It is noted that within the inter-professional care a degree of professional labeling is present which is harmful to the care delivery (McNeill, 2005). If personnel are unwilling to work collaboratively and share their knowledge then the inter-professional team will be unsuccessful in practice. It can also be mentioned that this type of complications may arise for the teams which are freshly introduced to inter-professional care concept or not well aware about the inter-professional working and care concept and hence lack the proficiencies to understand the advantages of getting accustomed with new working ways. 

Patient-centered care through multidisciplinary teams

Nurses have complications in getting accustomed with inter-professional working practice and in transforming practice and those professionals have actively opposed this reform. It is said that new working ways may recognize the requirement for innovative knowledge, understanding and skills (Sharples, Gibson & Galvin, 2002). However, it is also suggested that transformation in workplace does not indicate that the professional contribution in healthcare is of no importance. Inter-professional collaboration can enhance professional improvement in nursing.

Changes in the functions of nursing professional affect nursing and also the entire care workers. Hence, it is doubtful that the actual advantages of functional change can be accomplished by concentrating simply on nursing functions. The fellow staff and the service consumers should be actively participated in understanding the effects of these transformations and anticipations for the future. 

Philosophies of individuals regarding inter-professional working have an effect on professional interactions in multidisciplinary teams (Valentine, 2010). It is identified that communication is an issue within the teams who are unwilling to share information and critics have recommended that an elevated communication level is required to increased team interactions (Wagner, Liston & Miller, 2011).

Health care is becoming more integrated along with social care. Care is moving out of the care homes and integrating into the community.  Professional working is therefore becoming more widespread within the care given to the patients.

Effective collaboration within the professional practice is undoubtedly important to strengthen flexible health, patient-centered care and shared care service with professional working across organizational and professional boundaries, in non-hierarchical arrangements. Major changes are emerging to the functions of new and existing healthcare staff, but intuitive assumptions that inter-professional education will contribute to the development of collaborative practice is inadequate. It is said that inter-professional working is enjoyed by the students mainly. This may contribute to constructive alterations in perceptions and attitudes of other staff members. Inter-professional working may also contribute to developed understanding and knowledge of the function and roles of other staff in offering care to the service consumers, care providers and the family members of the service consumers.

The possible advantages of inter-professional working have become increasingly significant as the functions of health care personnel and nurses experience fundamental alteration. For instance: old nursing functions are becoming gradually more outmoded as the nursing personnel admit and discharge their clients, monitor enduring situations, prescribe medicines and organize diagnostic tests. Nevertheless, because of few research studies, less data regarding the benefits of inter-professional working is presented. The benefits include service delivery, developed clinical practice and patient benefits. One thing is very important to note that no proof of efficiency is not identical as proof of inefficiency.  None can simply state whether inter-professional working is effective or ineffective.

References

Cacchione, P. (2008). Interprofessional Nursing Research: Lost in Translation?. Clinical Nursing Research, 17(1), 3-4. doi:10.1177/1054773807311942

Clifton, M., Dale, C., & Bradshaw, C. (2006). The impact and effectiveness of inter-professional education in primary care. Royal College Of Nursing, 2-18.

Cook, M., & Hyrkäs, K. (2010). Interprofessional and Team working. Journal Of Nursing Management,18(3), 245-247. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2834.2010.01109.x

Freeth, D. (2014). Interprofessional learning through and for multidisciplinary working. EJEA. doi:10.1530/endoabs.34.ew1.4

Hassmiller, S., & Goodman, D. (2011). Interprofessional care and the future of nursing. Journal Of Interprofessional Care, 25(3), 163-164. doi:10.3109/01460862.2011.557903

Hood, R. (2012). A critical realist model of complexity for interprofessional working. Journal Of Interprofessional Care, 26(1), 6-12. doi:10.3109/13561820.2011.598640

Jones, I. (2007). The theory of boundaries: Impact on interprofessional working. Journal Of Interprofessional Care, 21(3), 355-357. doi:10.1080/13561820701257383

Kinnison, T. (2014). Working together: researching interprofessional education. Veterinary Record,174(24), i-i. doi:10.1136/vr.g4023

Lowe, F., & O'Hara, S. (2000). Multi-disciplinary team working in practice: managing the transition.CJIC, 14(3), 269-279. doi:10.1080/713678575

Mabbott, I. (2013). A Handbook for Inter-professional Practice in the Human Services – Learning to Work TogetherA Handbook for Inter-professional Practice in the Human Services – Learning to Work Together. Nursing Standard, 27(32), 28-28. doi:10.7748/ns2013.04.27.32.28.s37

McNeill, J. (2005). Working Hard or Hardly Working?. Dissent, 52(1), 116-121. doi:10.1353/dss.2005.0044

Sharma, U., & Klocke, D. (2014). Attitudes of nursing staff toward interprofessional in-patient-centered rounding. Journal Of Interprofessional Care, 28(5), 475-477. doi:10.3109/13561820.2014.907558

Sharples, A., Gibson, S., & Galvin, K. (2002). 'Floating support': implications for interprofessional working. Journal Of Interprofessional Care, 16(4), 311-322. doi:10.1080/1356182021000008247

Valentine, G. (2010). Nursing and Collaborative Practice – A Guide to Interprofessional Learning and Working – Second editionNursing and Collaborative Practice – A Guide to Interprofessional Learning and Working – Second edition. Nursing Standard, 25(12), 31-31. doi:10.7748/ns2010.11.25.12.31.b1140

Wagner, J., Liston, B., & Miller, J. (2011). Developing interprofessional communication skills.Teaching And Learning In Nursing, 6(3), 97-101. doi:10.1016/j.teln.2010.12.003