Interdisciplinary communication/collaboration

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https://www.myamericannurse.com/interprofessional-collaboration-made-easy/

https://tigerconnect.com/blog/5-benefits-of-interprofessional-collaboration-in-healthcare/

Interdisciplinary communication/collaboration has been researched and used with success to better patient outcomes and satisfaction across all areas of healthcare. Please take a moment to review the articles provided and then be prepared to share your own thoughts about how you can help facilitate successful interdisciplinary communication and collaboration that will positively impact your patients.

You will develop a realistic scenario that describes how several different healthcare disciplines collaborate to provide safe and effective care to a patient in the hospital, skilled nursing facility, or outpatient setting. Consider some different scenarios that demonstrate how different healthcare professionals must communicate and work together to provide care to a patient.

For example, you as the nurse must coordinate the administration of pain medications before physical therapy comes to work with your patient. Think of how many different disciplines may be involved with the simple act of getting the patient to the physical therapy department on time…there are many! You may need to call the doctor to get the order for pain medication, then call the pharmacy to have medication delivered to your unit. The CNA or PCT will have to make sure that the patient has assistance getting cleaned up for the day and is ready to go. Finally, you must communicate with physical therapy to find out when the patient is scheduled so you can administer the pain medication before the patient leaves the unit.

Other examples that require interdisciplinary communication/collaboration: getting a patient ready for surgery or discharge, admitting a patient to your unit from the ED, or sending your patient off the unit for a procedure.

Sample Solution

Lack of effective communication has been the leading cause of detrimental patient outcomes over several years. Effective interdisciplinary collaboration and communication to improve teamwork, build relationships, and improve patient outcomes across the healthcare spectrum is needed. Individual healthcare disciplines such as medicine, nursing, and other services rely on interdisciplinary collaboration to formulate a plan of care for patients. Coordination of care, collaboration, and communication among healthcare disciplines are paramount to the delivery of safe and effective patient care. The relative absence of effective collaboration and communication among interdisciplinary professionals can have a negative impact on teamwork and a produce a detrimental patient outcome.

There are other contingency theories that provide a more continuum based approach such as Redding’s theory of leadership and management, however Fielder’s description of how situational factors affect the leadership style required for the situation is extremely useful in understanding the fundamentals of leadership (Pettinger, 2007). Chelladurai in his Multi Dimensional Model of Leadership, expands on much of Fiedler’s theory but in a continuum based approach, in which the leader can adapt their leadership style to fit the situation (Chelladurai and Madella, 2006). Chelladurai’s theory is taken from sports psychology but can be applied to an organisational scenario. It provides a much more empirical categorisation of task structure, clearly differentiating a plethora of situations that require certain leadership styles for success. Chealldurai found three characteristics that affect the leadership style required for a situation, called antecedents, they mainly expand upon Fiedler’s situational factors and leader – member relations and ultimately affect how a leader should behave towards a situation. The first are situational characteristics, the environment in which the leader must perform, the second are leader characteristics, the experience, personal qualities and skills of the leader, and the third are member characteristics, the motivation, skill and experience levels of group members (Chelladurai and Madella, 2006). The situational characteristics and member characteristics have a required behaviour to ensure maximum group performance, they also have a preferred behaviour to ensure the satisfaction of group members, if the leaders actual behaviour matches both the required behaviour and preferred behaviour of the situation the consequence is maximum group performance and satisfaction. However, if the group are not performing and achieving goals or are not satisfied or both, then the leader is able to amend their actual behaviour to improve this. Leaders able to monitor performance and satisfaction, and understand what is required to amend the situation will achieve optimum group performance in Chelladurai’s model.
The one limitation of Chealldurai’s model is that it assumes the leader is in a position of complete positional power over the group, and can implement any leadership style of their choosing without constraints. Positional power is the authority and influence a leader has over a group, if the leader has positional power, they will be able to implement the leadership style they best see fit for the situation. Positional

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