NURS FPX 4010 Assessment 1 Attempt 1 Collaboration and Leadership Reflection Video
Reflection and Evaluation of Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Healthcare is like a game of soccer. It requires many different professionals from various healthcare fields to work as a team so that the patient can receive the best possible quality of care. With there being multiple specializations in healthcare fields in today’s age, teamwork between all medical staff has become a necessity. Only with teamwork can a hospital or healthcare facility function efficiently.
Interdisciplinary collaboration requires communication between healthcare professionals, effective communication with the patient, leadership, a supportive environment, common goals, and other such aspects. This concept has been around for some time and is thought to have been popularized by the Institute of Medicine in 1972. Then, the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) was formed in 2009 as the brainchild of various healthcare institutions from all over the country (Dyess et al., 2019). IPEC has since then defined a clear and concise approach to achieving interdisciplinary collaboration in healthcare. IPEC lists three main competencies required for interdisciplinary collaboration and they are as follows: the most crucial aspect is the code of ethics, then fulfilling responsibilities as per each team member’s roles, interdisciplinary communication, and lastly, team formation. There are also numerous benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration in healthcare, and they range from preventing medication errors, decreasing readmissions, reducing mortality rates, and a better healthcare plan for the patient (Brashers et al., 2019).
Background and Scenario
I have worked as an anesthetist in an operation theatre, and it is the one area where immense teamwork by everyone present in the room is required and without it, surgery can fail drastically. Our patient that day was the first patient to be undergoing surgery. She required heart surgery. As it required general anesthesia, I had to stay the entire time in the operation theater to monitor her heartbeat, blood pressure, breathing, and so on. In a surgery room, the healthcare professionals present include a surgeon, surgical techs, scrub person, assistant surgeon, and biomedical technicians, amongst others.
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Everything was going smoothly, with the surgeon doing his job, and the assistants helping dress the wound and handing over surgical instruments. Then, the lights suddenly flickered, and the surgeon faced confusion, which caused him to nick an artery. In doing so, accidentally nicked an artery. It caused sudden, uncontrollable bleeding. The team responded quickly, with the sterile team quickly placing a cloth over the bleeding to staunch it. As the anesthetist, I also quickly responded and applied specialized techniques to lower her blood pressure in an effort to stop the bleeding. Our arid response as a team ensured that the blood loss was managed and controlled almost immediately, and the patient faced no further harm. The rest of the surgery proceeded as usual, and the patient’s safety was well taken care of. This situation required each professional in the surgery room to work as one and respond quickly so as to ensure the patient’s safety which was at risk had the situation not been taken care of rapidly.
Role of Poor Collaboration in Inefficient Management of Human and Financial Resources
It can be easily deduced from the above story that communication between a team is the number one most crucial aspect of interdisciplinary collaboration. In case a miscommunication had occurred in that situation, the patient’s life would have been threatened. If a team lacks effective ways of communication, it will fail to respond quickly. This will endanger patients and also cause distrust between the team members. If one team member, such as the anesthetist, fails to conduct his/her duty as per his/her role, then that would be a violation of IPEC competencies and would result in a failed instance of interdisciplinary collaboration. Miscommunication will lead to low morale n the team, power struggles, and an inability to fulfill responsibilities (Graham, 2019). Most studies show that mortality rates, unhappy patients, burnout and stress in the staff, and medical and surgical errors, are caused due to miscommunication. To limit the adverse effects of miscommunication in the healthcare field, interdisciplinary collaboration is the only way forward (Brashers et al., 2019).
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