Strengths of Inter-professional Communication

Introduction

Professional identity in the healthcare profession is defined by the key competencies and skills necessary for professionals in this field to discharge their duties and responsibilities in patient care. For instance, according to Pinto et al (2012), a good healthcare practitioner must have communication, teamwork and interpersonal skills to enable a holistic care of patients through coordination and collaboration with other members of the profession within the care pathway. Against this backdrop, the main aim of this paper is to evaluate communication and teamwork as professional identities of healthcare professionals that help promote patient care. In simple terms, communication within the context of healthcare is the passing of information among practitioners and between practitioners and patients and/or their family (Manser, 2009). On the other hand, teamwork is defined as the collaborative effort between practitioners to ensure that quality and safe care is delivered to the patient (Greene et al, 2007). Whereas communication is normally construed as an integral element of teamwork, this essay will approach them on a stand-alone basis. For those pursuing research in this area, seeking healthcare dissertation help can provide valuable guidance in understanding these professional identities further.

Strengths of Inter-professional Communication

In the contemporary healthcare practice, inter-professional communication (IPC) is considered the enabler of a triple benefit including reducing healthcare cost, improving safe and quality healthcare, and promoting patient satisfaction (Allereddy et al, 2007). In the context of nursing for persons with nursing disabilities (LD), all professions must communicate and collaborate within a respectful environment. It means that in the wake of a shortage of healthcare providers, the health care fraternity is increasingly relying on IPC to deliver an efficient and quality care especially when crucial healthcare conditions such as LD (Amos et al, 2005).

Eliminating Risks

In LD healthcare, ineffective communication has been cited as a major cause of healthcare errors particularly because the patients also have communication problems (Canadian Health Services Research Foundation, 2006). Therefore, to reduce such errors, there must be an effective and constant communication and collaboration between the LD nurses and other professionals. For example, LD nursing involves in handing off the patients to different professionals and specialist depending on the patient’s healthcare needs. Hence, there needs to be an effective sharing of essential patient information among these professionals in order to mitigate the risks inherent in these transitions (Kalisch et al, 2007).

Worryingly, existing literature reveals that many healthcare workers are accustomed to poor communication due to the increasingly developing culture of low expectation and permissiveness in healthcare settings. According to Manser (2009), this culture is characterised by a habit among healthcare professionals of expecting and permitting incomplete and faulty information exchange, which contribute to medical errors. Moreover, this permissiveness allows nurses to consciously ignore clinical discrepancies and red flags because they view them as normal repetitions rather than worrisome or unusual indicators (Thomas, 2011).

Contrariwise, existing literature indicates that effective IPC is significantly associated with effective interventions, better information sharing among practitioners, safer procedures, improved morale of practitioners, increased patient satisfaction and reduced hospital readmission (Virani, 2012). According to the World Health Organization (2013), it encourages teamwork and enhances the clarity and continuity among the healthcare practitioners.

A body of literature has had a great focus on inter-professional teamwork as an enabler of safe and quality delivery of healthcare for people with LD. Today, teamwork is considered an essential element of quality patient care for several reasons. First, the complex and specialised nature of LD clinical care requires that medical officers must make faster attempts of complex health services procedures and acquire new skills (World Health Organization, 2013). With the increase of long-term conditions such as LD, healthcare professionals must deliver health care through a multidisciplinary approach especially in the UK where apart from learning disabilities; patients may be suffering from other long-term conditions such as diabetes and cancer.

Secondly, according to Manser (2009), research has proven that teamwork help reduces the number of healthcare errors and promotes patient safety while receiving care. Moreover, teamwork is a solution to issues such as burnout because not only one practitioner is responsible for all the medical procedures performed on one patient (Viran, 2012). Instead, the patient’s well-being is coordinated by an entire team of health care workers. It helps break down the centralised and hierarchical nature of healthcare organizations thus healthcare workers are more leveraged.

Thirdly, based on a solid communication, teamwork ensures patient satisfaction because they are more at ease working with various healthcare providers within a coordinated framework to get a satisfying care (Viran, 2012). Through team building sessions nurses experience more job satisfaction.

However, there are a few documented drawbacks of teamwork in healthcare delivery. One of them according to Pinto et al (2012) is that it appears to be wasteful especially when one job is assigned to a group of people rather than just one or two people. Moreover, teamwork has also been blamed for conflicts because colleagues may fall-out with each other and sometimes these fall-outs may be based on issues outside of work. According to Manser (2009), such fall-outs get in the way of effective care to the patient and may affect the quality and safety of healthcare.

Barriers to effective IPC

Whereas most LD nurses claim to work within teams, some of them tend to work autonomously (Manser, 2009). According to Amos et al (2005), efforts to improve patient care quality and safety have always been curtailed by various forms of barriers that hinder effective collaboration and communication between different health professionals within the healthcare setting.

Existing literature reveals that barriers to IPC can exist within various healthcare disciplines, mostly between residents and physicians, nurses and physicians, or anaesthesiologists and surgeons (Manser, 2009). However, according to Johnson (2011), a series of barriers have been identified to be common between physicians and nurses.

Cultural Differences

Whereas physicians and nurses have a frequent interaction with is the healthcare setting, Manser (2009) points out that they have different perceptions of their roles regarding the patient needs, and therefore they may have different patient care goals. For example, the existing cultural and ethical diversity within the UK where people come from different cultural backgrounds has been a major barrier. In this regard, Amos et al (2005) assert that people from some cultures are not accustomed to openly challenging other people’s opinions. Consequently, they find it difficult to speak out or condemn things when they see them going wrong (Manser, 2009). This implies that nurses from such cultures only speak out their opinions indirectly.

On the same note, cultural barriers have been cited as a hindrance to non-verbal communication within the healthcare setting. For instance, Johnson (2011) observes that while some cultures assign specific meanings of facial expressions, tonal variation, and touch, others do not have the same stereotypical meanings.

Hierarchical Differences

A review of literature also reveals that organizational hierarchies also create a barrier for IPC within the healthcare setting. According to Amos et al (2005), the vertical hierarchical difference, the influence of those on top over those below the hierarchies, conflict, interpersonal power struggles, and role ambiguity are the major cause of communication failures. According to Manser (2009), this is especially so because information is likely to be held or distorted when there is a hierarchical difference between two healthcare professionals, especially when one party wants to appear more professional.

Typically within a health setting, physicians are at the top of the hierarchy and therefore they tend to perceive communication as smooth and open (Manser, (2009). On the other hand, nurses and other staff at the lower levels may perceive communication as problematic. This hierarchical difference can contribute to a diminishing interaction between healthcare professionals necessary to promote a safer delivery of care to patients. Similarly, Amos et al (2005) argue that the existence of a hierarchical difference between healthcare professionals makes it difficult for those at the lower levels e.g. nurses to speak of their concerns and problems. Moreover, the behaviour of those at the top can be intimidating to those at the lower levels, making them unapproachable.

Jargon

Another major communication barrier to IPC is jargon. Because some specialist professions (e.g. the chiropractic specialty) is full terminologies relatively new to other healthcare professionals, written and spoken communication may be difficult for other professionals to understand and this contributes to important information about the patient (Johnson, 2011). For example, physiotherapists may use terminologies such a subluxation, motion palpations or subluxation listings, which may be too complicated for LD nurses to understand. Instead, these concepts can be described in easier terms such as ‘restriction’, ‘fixation’ or ‘Joint Fixation’ because according to Johnson (2011), ‘subluxation’ may have different meanings and this may confuse other care providers.

However, the use of such jargon has been praised to be a source of better understanding between professionals of the same specialty because if they have a precise understanding of what each term means. Nonetheless, care should be taken when communication such terms to other professionals belonging to a different specialty.

In conclusion, this paper has established that communication and teamwork are an element of professional identity that enables the delivery of quality and safe care to patients. While communication has largely been viewed as part of teamwork, the two are separately important and must be natured among various health professionals as they work towards providing safe and quality care to learning disability patients.

References

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