Interprofessional Teams in Long-Term Nursing Care

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Compassion
Advocacy
Resilience
Evidence-Based Practice
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Long-term care is an important aspect of the contemporary healthcare sector. It implies providing various services designed to meet a client’s health and personal needs during a specific period (Doornebosch et al., 2022). The approach helps people with limited capabilities to preserve possible levels of independence (Doornebosch et al., 2022). However, the diversity of needs means that a person might require assistance from different specialists. For tins reason, the work of interprofessional teams, or groups comprising two or more professions, becomes critical. Specialists should correctly understand every case to select an appropriate treatment. For this reason, it is vital to improve information sharing function continuously, as it is one of the most common barriers to achieving positive outcomes (Doornebosch et al., 2022). Professionals should share critical patient data, discuss it, and use the collaborative approach to establish an effective long-term care framework.

Compassion

Long-term care also means establishing close and trustful relations between a patient and a health worker. It means that compassion becomes one of the central aspects of the discussed paradigm. The term implies recognizing and understanding patients’ feelings and actions to manage them (Malenfant et al., 2022). Compassion is also a critical element of iCARE, including integrity, accountability, respect, and excellence as well (“I-CARE values,” n.d.). For this reason, members of interprofessional teams should cooperate with clients and use shared decision-making and goal-setting practices to ensure positive outcomes and high satisfaction levels (Malenfant et al., 2022). Integration of compassionate care will also impact the unit’s culture as specialists should start working together to understand patients’ feelings better and address them (Watts & Thorne-Odem, 2020). At the same time, compassion fatigue is a critical factor that might lead to burnout and deteriorate treatment results (Watts & Thorne-Odem, 2020). For this reason, it is vital to ensure that nurses support each other in terms of compassionate care.

Advocacy

In the modern healthcare setting, nurses should also act as advocates. It means they should collaborate with other care providers to guarantee that patients are satisfied with the current treatment and that their basic needs are fulfilled (Nsiah et al., 2019). One of the possible ways to cultivate advocacy is by educating patients about their conditions, possible outcomes, and options available at the moment (Nsiah et al., 2019). All interprofessional team members might share their visions and help to understand issues peculiar to their fields. It would impact the unit’s culture as health workers will be engaged in enhanced collaboration with patients and start viewing them as partners (Nsiah et al., 2019). It will also improve the outcomes because of better information sharing, discussion, and engagement. That is why advocacy should be an integral part of long-term care.

Resilience

Resilience is another fundamental component impacting the work of caregivers. It can be defined as using healthy proactive strategies to recover from setbacks, mistakes, and failures and avoid burnout (Watts & Thorne-Odem, 2020). High resilience levels help to learn from previous unsuccessful cases and avoid depression, negative thinking, and decreased performance (Watts & Thorne-Odem, 2020). Interprofessional team support can be viewed as one of the ways to build better resilience among nurses. Discussing complex cases and failures with colleagues might help to manage negative moods (Watts & Thorne-Odem, 2020). Moreover, the unit’s culture can be improved by using tools designed to struggle against burnout, such as methods offered by the Duke Center for Healthcare Safety and Quality, or simpler approaches, implying a focus on positive factors and cultivating hope, balance, and joy (Watts & Thorne-Odem, 2020). It would lead to better outcomes due to the health workers’ ability to remain effective in various conditions.

Evidence-Based Practice

Finally, evidence-based practice is one of the most effective problem-solving approaches to resolve most issues emerging in healthcare settings. It is the process of reviewing, analyzing, and integrating the latest scientific evidence into practice to enhance results (Chien, 2019). Engaging specialists in research activities can be viewed as one of the best ways to ensure that evidence-based practice is a part of the interprofessional teams’ work. For instance, by utilizing relevant and credible evidence about high fall risk among patients in long-term care, care providers can find the major causes for such accidents and eliminate them. Moreover, research conducted in the unit might help to collect new information about the factors leading to the increased risk of falls and share it with all team members. It will promote reorganizing the facility’s work toward creating a safer environment.

Conclusion

Altogether, interprofessional collaboration is a fundamental component of long-term care. Teams consisting of multiple specialists can address diverse clients’ needs and promote their well-being. Compassion, resilience, advocacy, and evidence-based practice are critical for aligning cooperation between clients and care providers. They can also be viewed in terms of the iCARE model, implying integrity, accountability, and excellence as the aspects to shape units’ culture and ensure they demonstrate high-performance levels. For this reason, all members of interprofessional teams should realize the importance of building closer relations with clients, understanding their needs, and using evidence to select treatment. It would help to promote better results and build closer relations with clients, which is vital for cooperation in a long-term setting.

References

Chien, L. (2019). Evidence-based practice and nursing research.The Journal of Nursing Research, 27(4), e29. Web.

Doornebosch, A., Smaling, H., & Achterberg, W. (2022). Interprofessional collaboration in long-term care and rehabilitation: A systematic review. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 23(5), 764-777.

I-CARE values. (n.d.). MVHS. Web.

Malenfant, S., Jaggi, P., Hayden, K. A., & Sinclair, S. (2022). Compassion in healthcare: an updated scoping review of the literature.BMC Palliative Care, 21(1), 80. Web.

Nsiah, C., Siakwa, M., & Ninnoni, J. (2019). Registered nurses’ description of patient advocacy in the clinical setting. Nursing Open, 6(3), 1124–1132.

Watts, S. & Thorne-Odem, S. (2020). Nursing yourself away from burnout and compassion fatigue to resilience and joy at work.Nursing Made Incredibly Easy! 18(6), 6-8. Web.

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