The Future of Inter-professional Collaboration in Nursing
Introduction
The nursing environment has changed significantly over the years. Besides the fast-paced technological changes, new methods for nurse-patient interactions as well as the interactions between nurses and other professionals have emerged. Dramatic changes pending in the healthcare systems call for the establishment of approaches that can improve care while reducing costs. The transitional Care model (TCM), for instance, is one of the current and future trends in healthcare that is set to foster home-based over hospital-based care. Green and Johnson (2015) point out the role of coordinated collaboration among healthcare workers in education and practice for TCM to work. Moreover, for such systems to work there is a need to incorporate the healthcare system approaches that not only foster information sharing about them but also those that compel users to pursue the benefits of such care models.
Major Recommendations
The success of the transitional care model in the future of nursing depends on the capacity to implement various recommendations. First, there is a need to improve the partnership between nurses and home caregivers. An APRN can help in transitioning care from the hospital to the home environment. However, the nurse taking up this role needs to engage in inter-professional collaboration in which key participants include social workers, discharge planners, physicians, and other healthcare practitioners (Mansukhani, Bridgeman, Candelario & Eckert, 2015). The only way to accomplish this is to establish training that would enable APRNs to identify their roles in the transitional care model and access as much information as they need. This care model will also imply sharing information with home caregivers, some of whom have no medical training. Such people would need technology-based systems that can help them access healthcare information for use while taking care of their kin wherever they are.
The second recommendation is that besides starting training opportunities for those who would handle transitional care systems, there should be technological approaches to information dissemination. Electronic health recording would be insufficient to represent patient data and direct the caregivers about the processes that need to be done. Condition-specific systems need to be established to enhance the self-care capacity of patients, reduce costs of transition and reduce the probability of re-hospitalization. Mobile-Based technology proposes easy manipulation, access, and use.
Key Terms
With the two mentioned recommendations, cultural sensitivity and cultural communication are inescapable. Communicating across teams and information sharing with people from different cultural contexts requires great levels of cultural sensitivity (Welk, 2017). In this regard, cultural sensitivity is the recognition that cultures different from one’s own are important and that their values are important to people from those cultures. The nurses and other healthcare practitioners involved in the TCM must show cultural competency, which is defined asthe proficiency required in handling people of cultures other than own. This will be essential mainly in the context of inter-professional collaboration. People from different professional backgrounds are most likely to be divergent in terms of communication. This combined with the differences in personal, cultural backgrounds and cultural competencies can result in strained communication practices across the teams (Welk, 2017). The effective inter-professional collaboration will, therefore, require a willingness to be engaged in finding solutions to pertinent communication issues.
References
Green, B.N. & Johnson, C.D. (2015). Interprofessional collaboration in research, education, and clinical practice: working together for a better future. The Journal of Chiropractic Education, 29(1), 1-10. Retrieved from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4360764/pdf/i1042-5055-29-1-1.pdf
Mansukhani, R.P., Bridgeman, M.B., Candelario, D. & Eckert, L.J. (2015). Exploring transitional care: Evidence-based strategies for improving provider communication and reducing readmissions. Pharmacy & Therapeutics, 40(10), 690-694. Retrieved from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4606859/
Welk, D.E. (2017). Towards leadership success in a global nursing organization: Developing intercultural communication competence. Global Leadership Mentoring Community. Retrieved from sigma.nursingrepository.org/bitstream/handle/10755/620431/2_Welk_D_p80578_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y