NURS 8000 Week 3 Discussion Intra- And Interdisciplinary Collaborative Practice

The Value of Intra- and Interprofessional Collaborative Practice

Collaboration in nursing plays an integral role in ensuring the enhancement of quality services in nursing. The doctoral degree stresses the importance of the same as emphasized by the Institute of Nursing IOM report. The report reveals that partnerships between nurses and other healthcare professionals and with nurses themselves will play an integral role in enhancing the quality of services offered to patients. The presence of both intra- and interprofessional collaboration amongst nurses is fundamental as it will give the nurses the ability to handle complex medication issues (Fleming & Willgerodt, 2017). The above value is associated with the assertion that the modern-day healthcare environment is complex from the patient perspective and as such, more than one discipline is required during intervention. During the interprofessional and intraprofessional collaboration, the DNP or PhD nurse will enjoy shared knowledge and perspectives to improve the healthcare outcome regarding a patient and even issues affecting healthcare nationally. Indeed, collaboration will strengthen the ability of the nurse to perceive topics variedly and appreciate disparate outlook, which is important in their leadership roles in organizations or even nationally (Laureate Education, 2011d).

The presence of collaboration across the healthcare spectrum is consequential to the role of a DNP or PhD prepared nurses in a number of ways. Fundamentally, the practice becomes efficient as shared decision-making makes it easier for the nursing profession to contribute immensely to the wellbeing of a patient (Jenkins et al., 2020. Moreover, the presence of such both collaborations improves communication between the nurses and members of other disciplines and amongst themselves. Also, the interprofessional collaboration may widen the scope of practice of nurses as they will be required to participate in making decisions in areas that may be traditionally a preserve of other specialties.

Examples

            A perfect example of an interprofessional collaboration entails the reduction of catheter associated infections UTIs at a facility. Both nurses and physicians play an important role in such a program. Both the nursing and the physician teams will work towards the commonality of reducing the infections. The nurses played a role in providing patient education and taking care of the needs of the patients. On the other hand, physicians participated in the formulation of the necessary interventions including antibiotic injections, which was done in collaboration with the nurses. Indeed, each morning, the teams met to assess the individual needs of each patient and revise or create a new intervention. As such, such a collaboration would lead to the achievement of the intended objective.

            Moreover, an intraprofessional collaboration may occur when a nurse leader introduces morning huddle routine for the nurse leaders of various teams and even the staff. During such meetings, the nurses will meet to discuss various issues affecting the various units in the previous day. Indeed, matters such as staffing issues, patient grievances, and ED wait time will feature. During the huddles, the nurses will be tasked to provide solutions or how they can address the issues by making recommendations to their leaders. Also, an action plan will be established as a consequence of the meeting and the same conveyed to various nursing units by their respective leaders. By doing that, the nurses will have acted intraprofessionally to solve common issues that affect their units.

 

 

 

References

Fleming, R., & Willgerodt, M. A. (2017). Interprofessional collaborative practice and school nursing: A model for improved health outcomes. OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 22(3), 2. DOI: 10.3912/OJIN.Vol22No03Man02

Jenkins, P., Jones, J., Koutlas, A., Courtwright, S., Davis, J., & Liggett, L. (2020). Constructing Doctoral Leadership Scholarly Role Boundaries Through Intraprofessional Nursing Education. Advances in Nursing Science, 43(4), 360-374. https://doi.org/10.1097/ANS.0000000000000309

Laureate Education (Producer). (2011d). The professional role of the DNP-prepared nurse [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu