Interprofessional collaboration
Interprofessional collaboration is a cooperative approach among health care professionals from various fields, aimed at delivering patient-centered care. This collaborative model emphasizes teamwork, where health care workers, patients, family members, and caregivers work together to enhance treatment outcomes. It encompasses a range of competencies necessary for effective collaboration, including shared values, clearly defined roles, effective communication, and teamwork dynamics. The World Health Organization (WHO) has advocated for interprofessional collaboration as a strategic response to global health worker shortages, asserting that this model can strengthen health care systems, improve access to services, and reduce medical errors. By pooling knowledge and skills, health care teams can provide more comprehensive care, particularly in complex cases, ultimately benefiting patient recovery and minimizing costs associated with health care delivery. This approach is particularly relevant in addressing pressing health challenges, such as chronic conditions and public health emergencies.
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Interprofessional collaboration
In business and industry, interprofessional collaboration is a partnership among health care workers who work together to coordinate and carry out patient-centered care. The term often is used in health care and social work. In interprofessional collaboration, health care professionals from a variety of backgrounds share problem-solving and decision-making responsibilities to provide the highest level of treatment for patients and clients. The teamwork approach also involves the input of the patients themselves, their families, and caregivers. Interprofessional collaboration includes the education and practice of methods to improve patient outcomes. This concerns four domains of competencies that health care workers must develop to facilitate collaborative relationships.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has encouraged interprofessional collaboration amid a worldwide shortage of health care workers. The approach can be used to build stronger health care systems and protect patients by improving access to medical services, reducing patient error, and lessening the costs of health care.
Background
Interprofessional collaboration is a modern term for interdisciplinary, trans-disciplinary, and cross-disciplinary care. Collaboration occurs when two or more individuals or organizations cooperate to achieve a common goal. This cooperation stretches across multiple professions in the health care industry.
The concept of interprofessional collaboration can be traced back to Lowell T. Coggeshall, a twentieth-century physician who specialized in tropical diseases. Coggeshall pushed for the collaboration of different branches of health care to further advances in medicine. In 1965, Coggeshall wrote that the idea of medicine as a single discipline used to heal one sick individual should be replaced. Instead, he offered an alternative: The idea of health professions working together could improve and maintain the health of the patient and society as a whole.
Interprofessional collaboration stresses patient-focused care within a community-oriented environment. This approach begins with the patient. Health care professionals work with others in their profession and in different professions to determine the best course of care for the client. Feedback from the patient, his or her family, and caregivers is vital. The process includes diagnosis, treatment, monitoring, supervision, and communication.
The collaboration among all those involved in a patient's care creates a team devoted to helping the client. For example, a doctor works with a nurse, surgeon, physical therapist, and pharmacist to form a plan of treatment for a patient facing knee surgery. Professionals share their knowledge, skills, and expertise. Through the relationships that they develop with one another, health care professionals can achieve a higher quality of care for the patient than each could individually.
In health care and social work, education informs and directs the implementation of collaborative practices and procedures. Interprofessional education, also known as interprofessional learning, occurs when two or more students or workers from different professions learn about what one another does. Interprofessional learning is cumulative, which means that workers accrue knowledge the more they work with one another.
Overview
Interprofessional education is a pivotal part of training health care workers for interprofessional collaboration and the competencies required to meet health care needs. Competencies, or the knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes that prepare workers for collaboration, can be generalized into four domains:
- Values and ethics. For interprofessional collaboration to work, it must be built upon mutual respect and trust. Workers across health professions should adhere to common professional values and high standards, including conduct, integrity, and quality of care. This domain also includes the ethical considerations that underlie the relationships between professionals and patients. This includes treating patients with dignity, maintaining confidentiality in a team atmosphere, and accepting individual and cultural differences among patients and other professionals.
- Roles and responsibilities. The delineation of roles should be clearly defined among the members of the health care team. Members should know what their specific responsibilities are, and they should understand how their duties relate to those of team members in other professions. Roles and responsibilities can be altered according to the needs of the specific situation.
- Interprofessional communication. Communication is an important tool in preparing health care workers for interpersonal collaboration. Workers must be able to communicate with one another effectively across professions. They can show their team members that they are willing to communicate by being open, actively listening, and showing interest in what the other person says.
- Teams and teamwork. Health care professionals must be team players for interprofessional collaboration to succeed. Team actions include working together to provide care to patients and clients and coordinating with other workers to avoid patient mistakes. Professionals also solve problems and make decisions together in the patient's best interest.
Interprofessional collaboration can improve patient recovery and strengthen global health care systems. In 2010, WHO touted interprofessional collaboration as an innovative strategy to deal with a shortage of 4.3 million health care workers around the world. With fewer human resources, professionals from different health care backgrounds can pool their knowledge and skills to meet the medical needs of patients and communities.
Through the cooperation of a team of professionals, interprofessional collaboration gives patients greater access to health services and resources. The approach has improved the conditions of patients with chronic illness, according to WHO's report "The Framework for Action on Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice."
By utilizing a team framework, the practice has resulted in the decrease of patient error. This, in turn, has lowered mortality rates, according to WHO. The agency's report also found that collaborative practices reduce hospital admissions, hospital stays, and patient complications, all of which lower the costs of care.
Interprofessional collaboration benefits patients by bringing together the joint expertise of professionals from different health and social care backgrounds. WHO believes that interprofessional collaboration can aid the world's ongoing medical challenges, including epidemics such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, humanitarian crises, maternal and family care, chronic conditions, and mental health disorders.
Bibliography
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