1. How multidisciplinary collaboration can affect clinical decision-making
Also known as multidisciplinary care or clinical collaboration, multidisciplinary collaboration is a concept that involves teamwork between two or more different professional departments in a clinical setting. With this kind of collaboration comes collaborative decision-making, where a patient’s needs are addressed based on a model of shared responsibility in decision-making.
Multidisciplinary collaboration affects clinical decision-making in the form of discouraging independent decision-making and encouraging interdependent decision-making. The main goal of multidisciplinary collaboration is to create a decision-making setup that enhances the patient experience, while also fostering a form of equality in decision-making between nurses and physicians (Olupeliyawa, 2020).
However, since multidisciplinary collaboration is a form of collaboration that involves professionals from different disciplines working together, there is a need to understand that decision-making is made collectively with consultations being the main driving force.
2. How collaboration can lead to improved patient outcomes
Collaboration, innovation, and teamwork in the provision of healthcare services improve patient experiences in various ways (Czarnecki, 2021). With such a setup, healthcare professionals are not only able to deliver complicated services, but they are also provided with a chance to learn new skills at a faster rate.
Not only that, but such a setup also dramatically reduces errors that are known to ruin patient outcomes while also wasting time which further lowers patient and family satisfaction. That’s in major consideration of the fact that collaboration eliminates the chances of duplicate effort which is often coupled with gaps in major areas of patient service, hence resulting in time wastage that is known to harm patients (Andriessen et al, 2019)
3. How a lack of collaboration can lead to poor patient outcomes
A lack of collaboration in any healthcare services setup will eventually have a detrimental effect as a result of various reasons. One of the main is that lack of collaboration is directly related to the absence of team cohesion. When a case relies on multiple professional disciplines to get solved, a lack of team cohesion means that there will be reduced efficiency in solving the case or problem.
Not only that, but a lack of collaboration can also result in a lack of mutual respect since open and solid communication will be absent. As a result, professionals often display unhealthy competitions, defensiveness in their line of work, and ineffective leadership, all of which can encourage workplace conflicts. With such experiences, poor patient outcomes are definitely inevitable.
4. Three barriers to professional collaboration among healthcare professionals and patients
There are lots of challenges or barriers that can threaten professional collaboration in a healthcare services provision setup. Three such barriers are:
Team members failing to show their commitment to collaboration
Clashing perceptions between professional disciplines
Having a team that is too large such that it becomes impractical to collaborate or a team that is too small results in the inefficiency of a collaborative setup.
5. The five best ways to promote professional collaboration among healthcare professionals and patients
There are various ways through which collaboration between healthcare providers and patients can be encouraged. Here are five such ways:
(i) Encouraging open and detailed communication between these two parties
(ii) Ensuring that the professionals rely on only one source to keep the patient informed, as that is less confusing to the patient
(iii) Using the available technology effectively for better outcomes in collaboration
(iv) Involving the patient’s family or someone with a personal relationship with the patient to ensure a much more comfortable setup while communicating to encourage collaboration
(v) Using multidisciplinary collaboration effectively, since it not only saves time but can also enhance the patient’s comfort greatly, allowing them to collaborate more efficiently since they are relaxed and feel secure.
6. How can the nurse practitioner encourage and support collaboration among the patient, family, caregivers, and healthcare professionals?
As a caregiver, every nurse practitioner has the power of communication bestowed upon them. They can use this power to keep the patient, their family, other caregivers, and involved healthcare professionals informed about what is going on with the patient. With such communication, it becomes easy to create a team network where the best interests of the patient are put in the center.
A nurse practitioner is supposed to be committed to coordinating the functioning of the team network that they have created, to ensure that the patient gets the best services possible. Besides, proper communication coupled with a commitment to one’s profession is a contribution to collaboration, as it assures the involved teams, that the nurse practitioner will always be available whenever they are required.
In mental health, specialists used to focus on the functioning of the involved professionals as opposed to centering their services on patients’ needs, which often resulted in poor coordination between service providers and patients (Lucas et al, 2019).
References
Czarnecki, M. (2021). Nurse Initiated Collaboration and Innovation Lead to Positive Patient Outcomes. Pain Management Nursing, 22(2), 233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmn.2021.02.017
Andriessen, D., Zielhuis, M., Greven, K., van Beest, W., Godfroij, B., & van der Lugt, R. (2019, October). Seven Ways to Foster Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Research Involving Healthcare and Creative Research Disciplines. In Dementia Lab Conference (pp. 174- 177). Springer, Cham.
Olupeliyawa, A. (2020). Collaboration in Healthcare: Implications and Educational Strategies for Postgraduate Medical Education. Journal of the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine, 6(2).
Karam, M., Brault, I., Van Durme, T., & Macq, J. (2018). Comparing interprofessional and inter-organizational collaboration in healthcare: A systematic review of the qualitative research. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 79, 70-83
