Introduction
The value of interdisciplinary collaboration in today’s healthcare facilities is undeniable. The collaboration of various healthcare specialties is critical not only for enhancing patient outcomes but also for the organization’s effectiveness. The current report aims to unveil the fundamental patterns of interdisciplinary cooperation according to the findings of the interview with a healthcare specialist. The purpose of the current study is to focus on a topic of relevance that will need an interdisciplinary team in the healthcare environment. Besides, the article also intends to include the findings of academic literature and the best practices and propose some solutions to the problem of interest.
The PDSA cycle is the key element of our approach, and its motif is the starting point as well as the criterion of the initiatives for Change. By means of this iterative approach as a systematic process, healthcare providers can systematically plan, implement, assess, and redesign interventions for organizational problems. A cyclical PDSA model is closely related to the nursing process. Thus, nurses can adopt the changes, after which they will develop their work specificity area (Abuzied et al., 2023). We aim to harness the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration, evidence-based practice, and change management theories through this report to bring about transformative changes in healthcare delivery. By means of the consensus of empirical results, theoretical models, and experience in real life, we aim to provide a complete roadmap that will enhance interdisciplinary collaboration in the health sector.
Summary of Interview:
During the interview, Dr. Smith, who is an experienced executive nurse at a major local hospital, brought up a key problem, which was the major cause of patient discharges. Dr. Smith emphasized the issues met on how to ensure continuity of care to patients who are in the process of being transferred from inpatient to outpatient or home care settings. She illustrated how the lack of clear communication by healthcare providers aggravates the disparity in care that, in turn, causes adverse outcomes such as preventable readmissions and medication errors. Dr.Smith’s ideas substantially drove home the importance of interdisciplinary teamwork to help overcome the inherent weaknesses in discharge. The experience of the author, seen from the frontline of her practice, is an invaluable source of insights for us into the complex issues behind the delivery of healthcare and so forms a solid ground for future designs aimed at enhancing patient safety and continuity of care.
Identified Issue Requiring Interdisciplinary Approach:
The interview with Dr. Smith brought to light a pressing issue within the healthcare system: asynchronous and nonexistent synchronization and information sharing in post-patient care. The presence of this adverse systemic effect poses serious patient safety challenges and produces many preventable adverse outcomes. Furthermore, through the adoption of the interdisciplinary, evidence-based approach, the healthcare delivery system can also guarantee quality and excellent care. The root of the problem is the discharge process because it is quite complicated. Therefore, the problem can be resolved by an interdisciplinary team that involves medical personnel from nursing, medicine, pharmacy, social work, or care coordination (Manandi et al., 2023). Collaboration of these experts in the cross-disciplinary undertaking will allow them to share their abilities, ideas, and resources to simplify discharge procedures and improve the quality of services for patients. One of the examples is that nurses can undertake detailed discharge assessments, educate patients on post-discharge following plans, and arrange follow-up appointments. Doctors correct the relevance of discharge medications, while pharmacists give crucial input on meds reconciliation and management. Social workers are attentive to psychosocial needs and are builders of communities’ links to resources. On the contrary, care coordinators monitor the whole discharge process, making sure the patients are smoothly transferred and have uninterrupted care.
In this regard, the interdisciplinary model makes it so that healthcare providers can formulate a customized discharge plan with respect to each patient’s unique needs and wishes. An interprofessional approach consisting of holistic patient-oriented care and open communication channels is what helps patients perform necessary activities in their health journeys and make independent decisions on their health matters. Thus, with this win-win model, the satisfaction of the patients will also be improved, and the risk factors, including medication errors, readmissions, and high hospital resource utilization that arise after a patient is discharged, will be eliminated (Manandi et al., 2023). This means that these sorts of unions are very important in the procession of occurrences that are entailed by patient discharge operations, which in turn leads to the enhancement of quality and safety in health care service provision.
Potential Change Theories and Leadership Strategies
Different change theories and leadership styles are regarded as applicable to the development of the interdisciplinary response that addresses the problematic organization challenge. Lewin’s Change Management Model is also, among other things, one of the best frameworks for effecting Change for transformation in healthcare (Harrison et al., 2021). This model delineates three distinct stages: the processes of unfreezing, changing, and re-freezing. In the first phase, healthcare organizations are required to form an unstructured state by disseminating the need for change information and breaking down the obstructive collaborative and communication barriers that appear in the discharge process. In the course of the interdisciplinary research, the partners can jointly identify the areas of potential action, along with the components required for implementing changes. During the second stage, called Change, interventions designed to enhance interdisciplinary collaboration and communication will be executed (Harrison et al., 2021). The application of evidence-based practices and the creation of a culture of continuous improvement within healthcare organizations allow these institutions to implement innovations that would make the discharge procedures less complicated and prevent the occurrence of adverse events post-discharge. Leadership support is a must for this phase as it demands good communication plans to acquire the approval of all parties and keep the commitment of all parties from the start to the end of the change management process.
In addition, the second stage is consolidating the new behavior and the institutionalization of changes that will make them part of the organizational culture. The leaders are the key in this transition period as they keep offering support, recognition, and rewards to ensure the continuance of cross-sector cooperation. On the other hand, regularly providing feedback and performance metrics can be used to monitor the intervention’s effectiveness and to locate areas for modifications. Lewin’s Change Management Theory and transformational leadership are two parallel functioning models that facilitate inter-supportive disciplinary collaboration and organizational Change (Harrison et al., 2021). Transformational leaders crave for and motivate healthcare professionals to go beyond personal goals and work collectively to achieve some corporate goals. Through the articulation of a compelling vision that will improve the current discharge processes, leaders will be able to form interdisciplinary teams with a shared purpose, and ownership and accountability will be created.
Moreover, transformational leaders allow their teams to bring their knowledge and ingenuity to the table, which in turn fosters innovation and never-ending improvement. Through active mentoring, coaching, and recognition, leaders can foster an environment that encourages interdisciplinary cooperation and joint problem-solving. In essence, they can overcome challenges that arise with interprofessional collaboration and achieve sustainable changes in discharge processes over time by using both Lewin’s model approach and transformational leadership.
Collaboration Approaches from the Literature:
A variety of collaborative approaches highlighted in the literature can be used to develop or strengthen interdisciplinary teams that aim to solve the hospital discharge problem. Another way of doing this is to create multidisciplinary discharge planning teams that contain people representing the different disciplines involved in patient care. In addition to that, the teams will meet occasionally to discuss the individual patients and the hurdles to discharge and to create patient-oriented discharge plans. In addition, health technology platforms such as electronic health records (EHRs) and secure messaging systems can promote the instantaneous exchange of information among providers located at the discharge sites (Manandi et al., 2023). The complexity of communications and data exchange could become the basis of interdisciplinary collaboration and thus quicken the release.
Conclusion
To sum up, Dr. Smith’s interview revealed a major disadvantage of discharging patients by an interdisciplinary problem. Change theories, strategies, and approaches to leadership and interdisciplinary collaboration from the health sector literature are applicable. Through this, the levels of interdisciplinary collaboration can be improved and the discharge process streamlined, hence bettering patient outcomes. It involves undertaking deeper research and a holistic approach in a combined way with regard to drafting a comprehensive plan on the interdisciplinary approach to the above-discussed problem.
References
Abuzied, Y., Alshammary, S. A., Alhalahlah, T., & Somduth, S. (2023). Using FOCUS-PDSA Quality Improvement Methodology Model in Healthcare: Process and Outcomes. Global Journal on Quality and Safety in Healthcare, 6(2), 70-72.https://doi.org/10.36401/JQSH-22-19
Harrison, R., Fischer, S., Walpola, R. L., Chauhan, A., Babalola, T., Mears, S., & Le-Dao, H. (2021). Where do models for change management, improvement, and implementation meet? A systematic review of the applications of change management models in healthcare. Journal of Healthcare Leadership, 85-108.https://doi.org/10.2147/JHL.S289176
Manandi, D., Tu, Q., Hafiz, N., Raeside, R., Redfern, J., & Hyun, K. (2023). The evaluation of the Plan–Do–Study–Act cycles for a healthcare quality improvement intervention in primary care. Australian Journal of Primary Health, 30(1), NULL-NULL.https://doi.org/10.1071/PY23123
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