INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH
By nature, healthcare requires an interdisciplinary approach. Patients may have “one doctor” at their primary care practice, for example, but they also engage with the complete team, including nurses, administrative support personnel, and lab technicians. Perhaps a specialist is called in to assist with a particular condition. All along the way, communication must remain open, direct, and frequent to best support the patient in a seamless and personalized experience. The effectiveness of interdisciplinary teams directly correlates to quality and patient satisfaction. If communication or collaboration falter, quality can suffer.
For this Discussion, you will read scenarios where quality has potentially been compromised. Using what you have learned about interdisciplinary collaboration, you will develop a solution to the problem.
To Prepare
- Review the Interdisciplinary Collaboration Scenarios below and choose one to focus on for your initial post.
Scenario A:
At Meridien Medical Center, hospital policy is to document the “reason” for not administering a medication that is ordered but not administered. The documented reason of “patient refusal” for venous thromboembolism (VTE) prophylaxis has been high across hospital units. In order to improve patient outcomes, the Quality and Patient Safety Committee decided to explore why so many patients refuse VTE prophylaxis. Their inquiry revealed that less experienced nurses were not very comfortable teaching patients about the risks of VTE and pulmonary embolism if they declined the shot. Using an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach, how would you plan to address the situation?
After reading through your chosen scenario: Post an explanation of how you would support the interdisciplinary team. Specifically, recommend and justify a strategy for addressing the central conflict or issue. Explain how a strengthened interdisciplinary approach relates to quality of care and patient outcomes in the scenario. Then explain what diversity (e.g., different generation cohorts, levels of experience, specialties, backgrounds, races, and genders) brings to the team and how you would leverage that in the scenario. Be specific and provide examples.
Required Readings:
Johnson, J. K., & Sollecito, W. A. (2020). McLaughlin & Kaluzny’s continuous quality improvement in health care (5th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett.
Chapter 6, “Understanding and Improving Team Effectiveness in Quality Improvement” (pp. 174–199)
Baik, D., & Zierler, B. (2019). Clinical nurses’ experiences and perceptions after the implementation of an interprofessional team intervention: A qualitative study. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 28Links to an external site.(3/4), 430–443.
Rosen, M. A., DiazGranados, D., Dietz, A. S., Benishek, L. E., & Weaver, S. J. (2018). Teamwork in healthcare: Key discoveries enabling safer, high-quality care. American Psychologist, 73Links to an external site.(4), 433–450.
Focus on the tables on pages 442 and 443.
Mitchell, R., Boyle, B., Parker, V., Giles, M., Chiang, V., & Joyce, P. (2015). Managing inclusiveness and diversity in teams: How leader inclusiveness affects performance through status and team identity. Human Resource Management, 54Links to an external site.(2), 217–239.
Villarruel, A., Washington, D., Lecher, W. T., & Carver, N. A. (2015). A more diverse nursing workforce. American Journal of Nursing, 115Links to an external site.(5), 57–62.
