Introduction
In a meeting organized by the healthcare team, thirteen people attended a discussion on improving patient care to reduce pain and suffering, address inpatient care services, and improve patient outcomes within the healthcare facility. The team leader chose a prestigious location for the meeting, where the members attended to participate. The goal of the meeting was to mainstream inter-professional collaborative methods, including decision-making, communication, and harnessing the exchange of expertise and knowledge across disciplines to enhance patient care. In order to improve patient healthcare, the members improved their effective communication, shared decision-making, shared leadership, and respect for one another.
Leader Coordination of the Meeting
The team leader briefly introduced the meeting and explained its goal to the participants. The team leader encouraged participation from all participants and allowed everyone to share their ideas. When expressing their opinions, members raised minor disputes, but the team leader was essential in resolving them and issuing clear instructions (Epstein, 2014). Team members gave an honest presentation due to the team leader’s open communication and emotional sensitivity. The team leader facilitated communication among the members, emphasized the value of their contributions, and illustrated how cooperation would bring the entire group closer to its objectives. The team leader also gave members duties to solve problems and develop solutions.
The team’s values and goals were the focus of the team leader. He defined the performance expectations for members and discussed with them the goals they are working toward and any obstacles they may face. The team leader also ensured that everyone worked well together (Epstein, 2014). He accomplished this by facilitating effective member contact and allowing individuals to offer suggestions independently. Members grew to trust the team leader. He acknowledged their participation and gave them the go-ahead to continue pursuing their objective. The team’s leader established priorities for the group, clarified the group’s goals, and delegated duties to team members. The team leader managed the team’s performance by ensuring that the meeting procedures were adhered to and exhibited sufficient technical know-how of the issues affecting the healthcare organization to team members.
Contributions of Team Members
Following their areas of expertise, the team members presented their opinions as contributions to the conversation. The members expressed their ideas regarding how to make healthcare services better. The group focused on working together to provide patients with better care. Members were free to bring issues related to their expertise in the debate. The team members were aware of each other’s responsibilities. Nurses are aware of what clinical officers do when providing healthcare services to patients. I noticed that members respected, trusted, and had confidence in one another during the meeting. This was amply demonstrated when members accepted one another’s points of view and worked together to make decisions. The opinions of the team members were also valued and appreciated. Collectively, the members decided to work on enhancing patient service delivery. Members eventually parted ways on some of the issues raised. The clinical officers were unable to concur with some of the tasks being performed by the nurses.
Interprofessional Communication
Interprofessional communication is about finding leadership and communication styles, reflecting on behavior, and understanding how to apply skills in the healthcare industry and a nurse’s daily life. The patient and the healthcare team are often negatively impacted by errors and adverse events that result from poor communication between team members (Morley & Cashell, 2017). In order to increase the quality of the healthcare system and decrease the errors associated with risk, effective teamwork, and communication are crucial.
All team members took various actions to support good communication between them as professionals. First and foremost, the professionals actively listened to and observed nonverbal communication (Morley & Cashell, 2017). They also agreed to a treatment program and effectively used information and communication technology. Respectful communication between professionals requires open and honest interactions. This communication helps to demonstrate and develop trust between team members.
During the team, I observed that when medical professionals interact with one another in an honest, thoughtful, and responsible manner, communication between the professionals takes place (Foronda et al., 2016). Each team member stressed their professional expertise while working together, and an effective decision was achieved by merging everyone’s viewpoints on the problem. Since the collaboration’s goal is to combine and exchange data efficiently, team members also use their domain expertise. The meeting went smoothly due to the team members’ collaboration and interprofessional communication.
Conflict Management
Every team has the potential for conflict when some team members have opposing viewpoints, interests, and objectives. In the healthcare sector, it is typical for medical professionals to become deeply involved in their field and develop an uninformed impression of the staff members they are dealing with. Each team member must be aware of their responsibilities and encouraged to offer their distinctive viewpoints (Almost et al., 2016). Everyone must see each other as equals and respect each other’s work. Healthcare has no hierarchy; everyone must work together to offer high-quality, secure patient care to enhance outcomes.
When several people must cooperate to achieve a common goal, personalities might lead to severe conflict. Working as a team can be extremely difficult when one member has a self-protective attitude or cannot take input from others. Some medical professionals find it challenging to collaborate with others when they are used to working alone (Almost et al., 2016). Understanding the various obstacles to collaboration is crucial, as is coming up with solutions. Patients may be put at risk, and staff and patient satisfaction may need more effective collaboration.
Each team member should be aware of the duties and responsibilities of the others, and there should be an atmosphere of mutual respect and appreciation for each other’s areas of competence. This might enable the unrestricted interchange of information about those subjects. Communication between experts from various fields is essential for productive teamwork that produces high-quality results (Almost et al., 2016). Therefore, having defined roles will ensure that all providers stay within their scope of practice. If obstacles arise, the team must be prepared to work to overcome them. The patient is most affected by the obstacles that arise, and it is ethically and legally required to give the best care possible. This would entail removing obstacles that adversely affect patient care.
Reflection of the Experience
Interprofessional collaboration is where all healthcare professionals from various disciplines collaborate to deliver proper care, improve patient outcomes, and increase patient safety by reducing errors. For Interprofessional collaboration to be effective, each team member needs to be aware of their colleague’s area of expertise, level of education, and scope of practice. All team members benefited from the meeting since it enhanced hospital patient care. Team members defined their roles and goals for providing quality services. In order to be receptive to hearing different disciplinary perspectives among different disciplines, I can employ conflict management techniques among team members. The second approach is to consider how each team member is behaving. Furthermore, I discovered that while interacting with other professionals, especially during team meetings, it is essential to have the skills necessary for effective interprofessional communication.
References
Almost, J., Wolff, A. C., Stewart‐Pyne, A., McCormick, L. G., Strachan, D., & D’Souza, C. (2016). Managing and mitigating conflict in healthcare teams: an integrative review. Journal of advanced nursing, 72(7), 1490-1505. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jan.12903
Epstein, N. (2014). Multidisciplinary in-hospital teams improve patient outcomes. Surgical Neurology International. 5 (7), 295–303. https://doi.org/10.4103/2152-7806.139612
Foronda, C., MacWilliams, B., & McArthur, E. (2016). Interprofessional communication in healthcare: An integrative review. Nurse education in practice, pp. 19, 36-40. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1471595316300208
Morley, L., & Cashell, A. (2017). Collaboration in health care. Journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences, 48(2), 207–216. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmir.2017.02.071
Soukup, T., Lamb, B. W., Arora, S., Darzi, A., Sevdalis, N., & Green, J. S. (2018). Successful strategies in implementing a multidisciplinary team working in the care of patients with cancer: an overview and synthesis of the available literature. Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare, 11, 49.
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