NUR 2868 Discussion Teamwork
NUR 2868 Discussion Teamwork
Think back to your most recent time in the clinical setting when another discipline (respiratory, physical therapy, nutrition, occupational therapy) was utilized.
Describe a form of interdisciplinary collaborative care you’ve seen on your current assigned clinical or work site. Then have a discussion about the following questions:
Who coordinated that care? What was the nurse’s role in ascertaining that the care was provided?
Was the patient’s outcome met? How or why not? What would you, a novice nurse-leader, have done differently to achieve the patient’s goals?
Finding innovative ways to build teamwork is essential in an interdisciplinary environment where multiple constituencies — physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and business officers — all have resounding voices. And when team members come together from different walks of life and embody unique perspectives, it’s not so simple to achieve convergence in patient care
.
“One of the biggest complaints from patients is ‘Everyone tells me something different,’” says Carla J. Rotering, MD, MA, medical director of respiratory and pulmonary rehabilitation at Banner Thunderbird Medical Center in Phoenix and White Mountains Regional Medical Center in Springerville, Arizona.
Imagine yourself as a patient, surrounded by “a parade of people,” she says. “Independent voices showing up at the bedside may not be in alignment with the other conversations going on.”
When healthcare team members act independently and cause confusion, it can erode a patient’s trust. Staying in close communication
with each other helps each team member best serve the patient’s needs, says Rotering, an executive coach with an emphasis on leadership development and co-author of the book The Language of Caring Guide for Physicians.
“These are really simple skills that make a difference,” she says. “They’re learnable in very short periods of time.” The information can be “delivered in very short sound bites” and practiced in the form of checklists and rules of thumb.