ANSWER
Professional Partner with Other Disciplines: Nursing Views from the Work Environment
Improving health results and guaranteeing comprehensive patient care depend on nurses being included into multidisciplinary teams. Based on my present workplace, I believe that nursing is becoming more and more acknowledged as a professional collaborator with other fields. Nonetheless, organisational culture, interprofessional relations, and personal encounters shape this view in several directions.
Appreciating Nursing as a Professional Partner
The main carers and usually the link between patients, families, and other medical specialists are nurses in holistic patient care. Care planning and implementation in my employment depend much on nurses. Working with doctors, therapists, social workers, nutritionists, they offer vital insights into patients’ social, emotional, and physical requirements. For example, nurses advocate for particular interventions depending on their careful monitoring and assessment and provide important information regarding patient progress during multidisciplinary team rounds.
Many of the nurses in my company have leadership roles—such as nurse practitioners or case managers—which supports their professional partnership. Frequently leading quality improvement projects and involved in policy-making, nurse leaders help to further establish their equal status as stakeholders in the healthcare team.
Obstacles towards Complete Acceptance
There are still several difficulties notwithstanding these developments:
Sometimes conventional hierarchical dynamics hold true, in which case nurses’ contributions are underappreciated in relation to doctors. This could show up as resistance to include nursing advice into treatment plans, especially in highly specialised fields like cardiology or oncology.
Lack of knowledge of the nursing scope of practice can restrict teamwork. For instance, even within the parameters of their training and licensure, advanced practice nurses may run across opposition when rendering independent clinical choices.
Workload and Staffing Problems: Sometimes nurses’ limited staffing and heavy workload make it difficult for them to actively participate in interdisciplinary meetings, therefore supporting preconceptions of nursing as task-oriented rather than decision-driven.
Techniques to Improving Cooperation
Interprofessional education, or IPE:
By use of collaborative learning opportunities for nursing and other professions during training, mutual respect and understanding can be cultivated. Research shows that IPE enhances patient outcomes and facilitates greater teamwork (Reeves et al., 2017).
Tools like SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation) help to ensure that nurses’ opinions are clearly expressed and valued during multidisciplinary interactions by means of which clear and ordered communication is facilitated (Thomas et al., 2021).
Giving nurses leadership chances and integrating them in organisational level decision-making will help to empower them as professional partners even more. Including nurses in ethics committees or quality improvement task forces, for instance, shows the dedication of the company to their knowledge.
In essence,
Though issues like hierarchical dynamics and role misunderstandings still exist, nursing is usually seen in my workplace as a professional partner with other professions. Healthcare institutions can help nurses be more included into multidisciplinary teams by supporting interprofessional education, better communication techniques, and nurse empowerment. Not only does it improve team dynamics but also patient care and outcomes by realising nurses as equal participants.
Notes
2017 Reeves, S., Pelone, F., Harrison, R., Goldman, J., & Zwarenstein, M. Interprofessional cooperation to raise standards of professional performance and medical results CD000072. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 6(6), https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD000072.pub3
Thomas, C. M., Johnson, D. & Bertram, E. (2021). Teaching nursing students professional communication skills is the SBAR communication approach. Education of Nurses Today, 42(1), 31–36 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2020.12.001
QUESTION
Share your perceptions based on your current work environment: Is nursing perceived as a professional partner with other disciplines?
Submission Instructions:
- Your initial post should be at least 500 words, formatted and cited in current APA style with support from at least 2 academic sources. Your initial post is worth 8 points.
- You should respond to at least two of your peers by extending, refuting/correcting, or adding additional nuance to their posts.