Collaboration and Its Link to Healthcare

Collaboration and its Link to Healthcare

Tashlyn L. Thomas, RN, BSN

Peer Reviewed By Tonia Polite

Winston Salem State University

MSN Program

Theoretical Basis for Advanced Nursing

October 4, 2012

This paper will cast a focus on the importance of collaboration in healthcare and the affect it has on the care provided by nurses, doctors, patients and their family members. The aim of this paper is to discuss how important it is to work together inter-professionally within a multidisciplinary team in order to achieve the best patient-centered care. Collaboration is "to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor to cooperate with an agency or instrumentality with which one is not immediately connected". According to Merriam-Webster (2012) collaboration is the state of having shared interests or efforts as in social or business matters. Collaboration is also a cooperative arrangement in which two or more parties (which may or may not have any previous relationship) "working jointly towards a common goal, it is knowledge management which is an effective method of transferring 'know how' among individuals, therefore critical to creating and sustaining a competitive advantage" (Merriam-Webster 2012). Collaboration is a key tenet of knowledge management. Collaboration aids in negotiations with conflict resolution strategy that uses both assertiveness and cooperation to seek solutions advantageous to all parties. It succeeds usually where the participants' goals are compatible, and the interaction among them is important in attaining those goals. Thus collaboration is important to all healthcare professionals and the methodology in which they deliver healthcare.

Having effective inter-professional collaboration will help to promote and optimize all active participation of all healthcare professionals in clinical decision-making that focus on patient needs while ensuring respect for each team members contributions. Inter-professional collaboration not only looks at teamwork but also communication, professionalism and healthcare issues that currently influence practice today. There are healthcare professionals that have a range of expertise and skills that may or may not differ to others, their experiences and insights into different situations capture dissimilar care needs, therefore it enables each patient to receive the best care possible. Healthcare professional can collaborate with each other in order to benefit the patient and deliver person-centered care through working closely with a multidisciplinary team.

The attributes of collaboration include but may not be limited to working in a group, combining skills, effective communication, teamwork and management of knowledge. My specific aim to defining this concept is due to the importance of being able to collaborate within an inter-professional and multidisciplinary healthcare team. Collaboration can be used as an aide in developing which treatment is best for any given patient between the multidisciplinary teams. Collaborating with the patient and their families help aide in them being a part of their healing process. Through collaboration there are issues that can be brought forth, knowledge can be shared, skills can be combined and the overall goals can be accomplished in healthcare which is essential in facilitating healthcare professionals in providing quality care.

Collaboration involves a team that provides a diverse set of skills, thereby providing ideal care for clients. Take the Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP), they meet the health care needs of the family by providing health assessments, direct care, and guidance, teaching, or counseling as appropriate, particularly around family self-care; this is all facilitated through collaboration. The FNP typically works collaboratively with family primary care physicians and other professionals within the health care system. In addition to conservative practice in an office, clinic, or ambulatory care center, the FNP may also follow families in a variety of settings, such as school, home, work place, or hospital, reliant on client need which also requires effective collaboration and effective communication.

I will be using this concept in the form of sharing knowledge and working jointly together as a team in order to accomplish a common goal for the patient and their families. The first step would be to initially collaborate and see how to actually implement this plan as for working as a collaborative team. The main focus is to accomplish a common goal, share knowledge and be able to aide in the proper care of patients and their families.

This paper will analyze on how collaboration will be operational when delivered correctly. It will have a model case which will have the focus on the positives. There will be negatives acknowledged while mainly focusing on the positives. In effort to look at implementing a multidisciplinary team we would have to focus on the different uses of collaboration and alleviate the things that may cause this working group to be problematic, which may interfere with the common goal set at hand.

"Interventions aimed at practice change almost invariably must be more complex, multidimensional, and resource intensive, making it less likely that the requisite capabilities and resources will reside in any one organization" (Olson, Balmer, Mejicano, 2011). With the complexity of modern day medicine, accepting collaborative approaches ultimately improves the practice. With the improvements of the practice, the collaborative approaches become less complicated. The "change in practice may require change in systems, which often entails collaboration with a practice or health care organization" (Olson, Balmer, Mejicano, 2011). The ever changing variables in healthcare will force the change in systems therefore forcing a change in the delivery of healthcare plans for patients.

Although change can be an uncomfortable transition, it must be handled correctly and thoroughly. "Practice change involves complex interventions in complex systems, and collaboration brings together partners with difference and valuable perspectives on how to frame the practice change problem and who can provide a more extensive repertoire of strategies that might be used to address it" (Olson, Balmer, Mejicano, 2011). The changes will implement the collaborative attempts put forth by the healthcare professionals.

Healthcare has many interfaces in which every