In the article, Improving nurse-physician Teamwork through Interprofessional Bedside Rounding, the authors studied way to improve overall communication between the whole health care team. The team included attendings, residents and nurses. During each day when the doctors would round they would bring the nurse into the patient’s room and they would all round together. The main focus was to increase face to face communications by using Interprofessional bedside rounds which in turn would lead to increased patient satisfaction.
They found that by using the Interprofessional bedside rounds that the entire health care team would be on the same page with the patient. Everyone would know what was going on and what the plan was with the patient that day. It allows for everyone to ask questions from the doctors, nurses or patients. Which in turn they found decreased the amount of pages to the doctors throughout the day. Where I currently work we have started doing this on our Med/Surg patients. By being able to round with the physicians on your patient you know what the physician tell the patient, so throughout the day if clarification is needed by the patient about what the doctor was said, we as the nurse would be able to provide the clarification rather than having to call. Or knowing what the doctor is concerned about and being able to do follow ups through the day if needed. It allows for better care of the patient and better communication across the board.
The benefits to IPE would include increased patient satisfaction, feeling like everyone is working as a team to get them better. Less pages having to be made for clarifications of what the doctor wants or said to the patient. Barriers would be staff participation, nurses being busy with other patients when the physician rounds or the physician not wanting to participate because they are in a hurry. Overall, if IPE is possible to do with the physicians and nurses it would improve communication and would lead to less confusion and could improve the care we provide to our patients.
Reference
Ratelle, John, Stanislav Henkin, Tony Chon, Marie Christopherson, Andrew Halvorsen, and Lindsey Worden. “Improving Nurse-physician Teamwork through Interprofessional Bedside Rounding.” Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare JMDH (2016): 201. Web. 8 July 2016.
In the article, Interprofessional Education for Collaborative, Patient-Centered Practice, it talks about Interprofessional Education in general but goes further in to the structural changes that need to be made within the collegiate and health care industries to be able to allow IPE to truly work. It talks of the challenges of setting up IPE among many different levels of educational levels from students to nurses to doctors. That it’s not just about implementing IPE but how on needs to be structured in order for it to work properly.
IPE is to be focused around a holistic approach, one that would allow many different professional disciplines to work together for a collective outcome, patient care. It is not about “dumbing down” the education between discipline but about a process the continually offers and facilitates and ongoing trust among professionals. Particular challenges that are being met with using IPE between collegiate and the health industry are a lack of resources and participation among workers and the lack of evaluation of IPE and what could make the process more fluid. IPE is able to work when the subject matter requires a team approach and when critical reasoning skills can be enhanced.
I liked how it mentions starting IPE at a pre-licensure education to put the patient in the centre of the focus. By allowing this to begin early students begin asking different types of questions that would allow them to work collaboratively in teams with a clinical concerns but keeping the patient the main focus.
By making changes at a collegiate level prior to a licensure could change the way people begin to think of medicine, it would allow for open communication between disciplines and looking beyond the stereotypes. With biases aside the patient can become the full center of care with a team of disciplines working around them.
References
Gilbert, John. “Interprofessional Education for Collaborative, Patient-Centred Practice.” Nursing Leadership Cjnl 18.2 (2005): 32-38. Web. 8 July 2016.