Interprofessional collaboration and communication are vital since nurses work with other healthcare professionals to offer high-quality care. According to Huber (2022), interprofessional collaboration in healthcare ensures safe, high-quality, and accountable care with improved patient experience. Therefore, organizations can achieve improved patient health and safety outcomes by improving interprofessional collaboration and communication since teams would be working together to achieve a common goal. This paper describes the communication and collaborative strategies that may be applied for respectful interactions and address potential issues among the team in that health care setting.
Health Care Setting and Individuals Working Together
The healthcare setting for this discussion is a hospital, where various healthcare professionals work together to accomplish a common goal. These professionals include the attending physician, nurse practitioner, social workers, and dietitians. They work together through a multidisciplinary collaborative approach to achieve patient safety. Collaboration among the various team members in the facility is essential for improving the organization’s efficiency and communication (Huber, 2022). While working in the hospital, each team member has to communicate and work together at some point. Therefore, collaboration and communication among the team members are necessary to achieve set goals in the organization.
Issues Experience Within the Health Care Settings
One of the major challenges experienced in the hospital is medical errors due to poor communication. Studies have shown ineffective communications as a leading cause of medical errors and patient harm (Street Jr et al., 2020). The medical errors in healthcare settings have destroyed patients’ faith and confidence in physicians’ ability to help them. It has also increased anger, guilt, inadequacy, depression, and fear of continuing among healthcare professionals after an event. However, this problem may be reverted through communication and proper leadership. Another issue experienced in the hospital is nursing shortages, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. With the increased number of patients and inadequate nursing staff, nurse burnout, nurse dissatisfaction, medical error, and low-quality care have increased (Ghafoor, 2021). Besides, the nursing shortage problem negatively affects communication and collaboration among the interprofessional team.
Attributes of a Healthy Culture that Helps Teamwork
Healthy workplace culture is where employees feel valued, safe, and comfortable, with an opportunity for growth. Some elements of a healthy workplace include communication of purpose and values, meaningful work, proper leadership, meaningful relationships, and constructive conflict management (Prichard, 2019). A healthy culture ensures that an individual or group works smoothly and effectively and influences employees’ work relationships and productivity. Therefore, a healthy culture is vital to achieving the goals and objectives of the healthcare organization. Leaders should ensure that individuals and groups’ behaviors such as integrity adhere to a positive culture.
Qualities of Effective Communication
Communication is a core component of the establishment of good relationships. It results in professional practice and significantly influences patients’ outcomes. Effective communication would help reduce medical errors among the healthcare personnel in the healthcare settings. Qualities of effective communication include active listening, clarity and concision, empathy, open-mindedness, feedback, friendliness, and respect (Doyle, 2018). For effective communication and collaboration, each team member should practice active listening. Moreover, members should convey the message clearly and directly, understand and respect other people’s views even when they disagree, be open-minded, and appropriately give and receive feedback.
Therefore, there is a need for different communication styles to maintain a balance in the healthcare setting. When team members use these styles, it builds trust, improves interpersonal skills, and enables efficient and effective decision-making (Nwanne, 2021). Besides, team members should engage with each other regularly to build trust, which includes understanding each other’s communication styles.
Boundary-Spanning Activity for Collaborative Culture and Enhance Communication
Boundary-spanning is the role of the different individuals who work in groups, but they have ties that divide them from the rest of the teams (Hunt et al., 2016). It is a method of communication through which leaders ensure that there is a collaborative culture. The boundary spanners are important as they create direction, alignment, and commitment to achieving an organization’s goal and vision (Hunt et al., 2016). In healthcare, boundary spanners help integrate services, improve quality of care, and reduce costs. They include systems such as service delivery, coordination, guarding, and even external communication (Weiss et al., 2014). One of the boundary-spanning activity I would incorporate is coordination. This activity would ensure that I coordinate team members from the different health departments. For instance, nurses and pharmacies should coordinate for efficient drug administration.
Employee Satisfaction and Patient Care
Employees satisfaction plays an integral role in patient care. When a healthcare team is satisfied with their job, free of factors such as stress, workload, and unsafe working conditions, they are in a position to improve the quality of patient care (Farman et al., 2017). Professional communication is necessary to provide acceptable interactions with patients, families, and other healthcare professionals. This communication entails actively listening, especially when caring about patients’ needs in the hospital. Active listening ensures that the patients trust and have confidence in the healthcare team’s abilities (Chaar, 2020). Direct and effective communication should be excised among the teammates and the management in the organization. One should be clear when communicating procedures and the needs of patients. According to Moudatsou et al. (2020), direct and effective communication in healthcare contributes to the reduction of medical errors. Another professional communication skill among the healthcare personnel is being empathetic when dealing with the patients and their families. Empathy enables team members to show concern and sincerity, helping them connect with the patients and their families (Drossman & Ruddy, 2020).
Role of Health Care Leader in Facilitating Collaboration and Clear Communication
As a leader, it is crucial to learn ways to facilitate collaboration and communicate among interprofessional teams and patients together with their families. Some of the things that I can do in the improvement of communication and collaboration include assessment of the current communication methods and creating a better communication strategy. It is also my role to streamline communication channels. As a leader, it is important to ensure that communication protocols are in place for fast and effective communication. It is also necessary to remove barriers in the organizational culture that hinder effective collaboration and communication. The healthcare organization leaders who do not adhere to these communication protocols should be held accountable.
Conclusion
Effective communication and collaboration are essential in ensuring effective teamwork for safe patient care and employee satisfaction in the healthcare setting. Members of the interprofessional team should establish effective communication to help the facility reduce the current medical errors issue. They should be clear, empathetic, open-minded, respectful, and friendly when communicating to avoid miscommunication or misunderstanding in the care process. With effective communication and adequate collaboration, the team will improve the quality of care in the facility.
References
Doyle, A. (2018). Communication Skills for workplace success. https://www.ramapo.edu/hr/files/2018/02/Communication-Skills-for-Workplace-Success.pdf
Drossman, D. A., & Ruddy, J. (2020). Improving Patient-Provider Relationships to Improve Health Care. Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, 18(7), 1417–1426. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cgh.2019.12.007
Ghafoor, Y. (2021). Impact of Nurse Shortage on Patient Care. Saudi J Nurs Health Care, 4(4), 114-119. https://saudijournals.com/media/articles/SJNHC_44_114-119.pdf
Huber, C. (2022). Interprofessional Collaboration in Health Care. Praxis, 110(1), 3-4. https://doi.org/10.1024/1661-8157/a003808
Hunt, C. M., Spence, M., & McBride, A. (2016). The role of boundary spanners in delivering collaborative care: a process evaluation. BMC Family Practice, 17(1), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12875-016-0501-4
Nwanne, E. (2021, August 12). The 5 communication styles and how to use them effectively. Work patterns. https://www.workpatterns.com/articles/communication-styles
Prichard, S. (2019, April 1). 6 Key Elements of a Healthy Culture. Skip Prichard | Leadership Insights. https://www.skipprichard.com/6-key-elements-of-a-healthy-culture/
Shanahan, T., & Cunningham, J. (2021). Keys to Trust-Building with Patients. Journal of Christian Nursing, 38(2), E11-E14. https://doi.org/10.1097/cnj.0000000000000823
Street Jr, R. L., Petrocelli, J. V., Amroze, A., Bergelt, C., Murphy, M., Wieting, J. M., & Mazor, K. M. (2020). How communication “failed” or “saved the day”: counterfactual accounts of medical errors. Journal of Patient Experience, 7(6), 1247-1254. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F2374373520925270
write