Reflection

The Dimensions of Interprofessional Practice Inter-professional practice is “two or more professions working together as a team with a common purpose, commitment and mutual respect” (Freeth et al. 2005) Throughout this reflective commentary using a broad range of literature, I will be critically analysing the unique role of the nurse in contribution to the interprofessional team, evaluating the contribution of all members of the interprofessional team in providing holistic care to patients, identify and demonstrate decision making and problem solving processes associated with interprofessional practice, engage in and examine the effective of collaborative activities and reflect on and learning and transferring newly gained knowledge into my own area of practice. The NMC Code (2008) charges nurses to protect confidential information, and to only use, it for the purposes given – for their treatment. Therefore all patients and events mentioned in this essay are inspired by real patients and events, but names, locations, dates and other details have been altered or obscured to make identification impossible Analyse the unique role of the nurse within the interprofessional team: What happened' Making a Difference (DOH 1999) suggests that effective care is the product of interagency working. Professionals working in collaboration provide care which is designed to meet the needs of the patient. During my negotiated placement on the Critical Care Unit, I was offered the opportunity to work in a variety of different situations, with both the chronically and acutely ill patient. Throughout my experience I worked interprofessional with a range of different professionals. I felt that working with nurses of who had much experience and were giving evidence based care would be highly beneficial. As part of the Critical Care Team I had the opportunity to work within a large variety of specialities both independently, as part of a nursing team and an interprofessional team to assess, plan, implement and evaluate care, covering autonomous and collaborative care of individuals of all varieties in sick and health in different situations. Nurses as part of the interprofessional team utilise the promotion of health, prevention of illness, and the care of ill, disabled and dying people (ICFN, 2010). The role of the nurse in the critical care unit, recognises the need to act as an advocate and manage the care of many different inter-professionals including doctors including surgical and medical, specialists, nurses, physiotherapists, outreach nurses, dieticians and many more for the shared common goal of achieving seamless, high quality and evidence based care for the patient (Watts et al 2007). Whilst working with the nurses in critical care I was able to see the way the wishes of the inter-professional team were bought together, using prioritisation in relation to the resources available. Working as part of this team I was able to witness the management of interpreting, translating and communicating clinical information in ways that informed patient diagnosis and outcome, through flexible working and the blurring of nursing boundaries to ensure continuity of care. There is an abundance of information about communication, especially for nurses because it is considered by many as the core component to all nursing actions and interventions. Lack of effective communication is a problem that still exists because the learning process that leads to a skilled level of ability may take years of experience to develop (Watson and Wilkinson 2001). I feel working in this way allowed the nurses to bring together the different aspects of care being delivered by the interprofessional team to create order in an arranged and credible way with the sights of effective results (Walker et al 2007) * Evaluate the contribution of all members of the interprofessional team in providing holistic care to clients/patients- Evaluation Members of the interprofessional team in the Critical Care unit were recognised as doctors of all specialities including surgical and medical, nurses of all grades including nurse practioners and specialist nurses, physiotherapists, dieticians, radiologists, outreach nursing teams and in my chosen area of reflection for the interprofessional team working these were the main members. It was recognisable that within the interprofessional care team there still existed to be a degree of professional stereotyping, this appeared to be detrimental to the delivery of patient care (Mandy et al 2005) goes on to discuss that if team members are reluctant to work together and share knowledge then the interprofessional team will be ineffective in practice. I recognised that teams of professionals of who were new to the concept of interprofessional working were uneducated in the benefits of doing so, therefore lacked skills to understand the benefits of adopting new ways of working. However Whitehead (2001) suggests that nurses have experienced difficulties in adopting interprofessional working in practice. Many people within the team recognise the need to work together and the benefits of learning how to work together and ways to improve interprofessional team work skills. People now recognise that interprofessional collaboration is essential to the successful achievement of an integrated care system that will enhance patient outcome, and therefore have the same aims for care delivery to plan, implement and evaluate care given (Day, 2006). Barriers to effective interprofessional working were evident whilst working within the critical care team, it became important to recognise that interprofessional working is an integrated working system and is not as a blurring or dismantling of traditional professional boundaries (Day, 2006), I feel that interprofessional team collaboration working is concerned with different professionals sharing tasks and common skills, if there is a overlap between the roles of different professional groups, whilst at the same time individuals retain their own unique combination of skills recognisable to their own profession. The development of clear boundaries within the interprofessional team often helps to create trust and respect (Benny 2010), within the integrated care team of critical care there was an apparent appreciation for these boundaries, it allowed people to it also helped to ensure that boundaries were clearly defined.