Healthcare Team Individuals and Professionals

Question: Discuss about the Healthcare Teamfor Individuals and Professionals. Answer: Introduction Healthcare is a diverse domain that incorporates various individuals and professionals to reach converging outcomes. To provide effective intervention to the patients a proper interaction between the different healthcare professionals and the patient and their family is essential. Diagnosis and treatment of a disease or disorder require the cumulative effort of related healthcare professionals. The roles of the professionals vary in accordance to their level of correspondence with the patient and their level of responsibility. Either way each professional plays an important role in ensuring that the healthcare goals are reached efficiently. Hence, the field of healthcare requires a multidisciplinary team approach rather than an individual one. Some of the healthcare professionals related to our concerned topic are Community Health Workers, Health Educators, Nurses, Nutritionist, Pharmacist, Physicians, Volunteers and certainly the family members of the patient (Astaraky et al. 2016). The priorities of the patient are assessed and appropriate interventions plan to alleviate the symptoms of the disease is the main aim of a healthcare team. In this report, we discuss the factors that influence the effectiveness of a healthcare team, how personal values can affect potential of being an effective member of the team and the role of the leaders to develop an effective team. In this context, the New South Wales Health CORE values are being discussed. The last section is a summary reflection on the approach that can help one develop into a healthcare professional and its future implications. Effectiveness of a Healthcare Team An effective healthcare team fulfils certain criteria that allow them to achieve shared goals intended towards individuals, families or even communities (Dunn et al. 2013). Studies have shown that there are specific core principles and values of an effective healthcare team. There are various types of healthcare teams, viz. teams for disasters, teams for emergency patients or acutely ill patients, teams for home-based patients or teams that comprise of just the clinician and the patient. Thus healthcare teams vary in size as well as the severity of the patients. This diversity demands standardized guidelines for the team members to follow. Providing healthcare with a team-based approach is a rather newer approach adopted in the healthcare domain (Ekedahl and Wengstrm 2008). It aims to address the issues of the patients and provide a patient-cantered care to deliver the required interventions regarding health. Studies have proved that a team-based approach provides a better healthcare quality along with improved health outcomes (Graham et al. 2009). The reliability and trust between the team members is key for an effective team, lack of which leads to poor coordination among the members and eventually may prove detrimental to the patient. A healthcare team is posed with several barriers that must be overcome by taking appropriate actions. Some of the barriers already recognised are lack of experience and expertise in the concerned field, cultural discrepancies and discrimination, language barrier, lack of adequate infrastructure and insufficient reimbursement. The essentials values that need to be satisfied for formation of effective teams are honesty, humility, creativity, discipline and curiosity (Apker et al. 2006). Honesty among the team members is an absolute necessity for a team. It establishes transparency regarding the objectives, purpose and decisions and mistakes made by individual members of the team or the team as whole. Discipline ensures that all the members understand their roles and perform their job accordingly without failure (Fay et al. 2006). A team needs to be creative to face new and more difficult situation and handle it efficiently. No discrimination and sense of pride must prevail in any of the team members regarding their post or level of responsibility. Humility towards other team members and accepting mistakes others make is important. The team as a whole needs to learn from previous experiences and apply it on their future proceedings. A reflective approach is required. The basic principle that are widely followed by healthcare teams is a shared goal among all the members including the patients and their families emphasizing on the specific needs and requirements of the patient (Reddy and Spence 2008). Including the participation of the patient and the family has shown to develop a sense of reliability and competence in the patient. Observing the progression of the team towards reaching the shared goals is also an important part of the overall effectiveness of the team (Atwal and Caldwell 2006). Several organisational factors also play a role in specific situations. A clear elucidation of the roles and responsibilities of all the team members is a primary need for the teams performance. The accountabilities of the members also need proper explanations so that each of them has clear understanding of their responsibilities (Lemieux-Charles and McGuire 2006). A certain level of mutual trust and connection between the members of a team is essential. Dev eloping the available resources resolving the conflicts within the team is necessary for building such connections and trust. A sense of trust between the professionals and the patient family is also indispensible in this regard (Rosen et al. 2009). All the members must possess efficient communication skills. Regular feedback on the failures and success of the can help the team and improve the quality of healthcare provided. Role of Personal Values Personal values of healthcare team members and especially nurses have serious impact on the quality of healthcare the patient receives (Watts et al. 2009). A basic moral value of a nurse should be to provide uniform and consistent healthcare interventions to all the patients irrespective of their age sex, ethnicity or other socioeconomic parameters (Mitchell et al. 2012). A health professional needs to be absolutely unbiased and avoid discrimination of his patients. Health professionals must realize the true goal of their profession, which is to provide the best possible health interventions and secure well-being of others (Solheim et al. 2007). Patient-cantered care is an additional role nurses need to address compared to other healthcare professionals. Integrity is one of the most important personal values to be possessed by a health professional. While providing healthcare facilities a professional or any other member of the team for that matter must abstain from any form of discr imination (Krner 2010). These issues must be handled with utmost care as it can have severely detrimental influence on the psychology and perception of a patient (ODaniel and Rosenstein 2008). Patients who have faced discrimination in the field of healthcare often avoid confrontation with doctors, physicians or nurses, which makes them susceptible to adverse health hazards. Not consulting with the professionals when necessary can have long-standing adverse health effects that turn unmanageable in the future.Role of Leaders Role of leaders have been emphasized in all organisational sectors worldwide. The competence and efficiency of a leader can influence the overall performance of the team in several ways. Healthcare organizations have also identified the importance of a pertinent leader in enhancing the performance of the team and employing effective strategies (Nembhard and Edmondson 2006). A proper leadership increase the overall morale of all the team members and allows them to take successful decisions and perform their role in an efficient manner. The leaders of healthcare teams must address certain issues that are common and relevant to their field of work (Pronovost et al. 2006). Leaders require measuring the progress of the team by assessing the impact of the intervention (Xyrichis and Lowton 2008). A correct performance-measuring standard must be chosen considering the type of intervention. An incorrect standard may lead to inaccurate measurement of the outcomes and eventually inability to ta ke improvement measures. Redesigning healthcare delivery systems require participation on part of the doctors and clinicians (Krause et al. 2009). Leaders must ensure such involvements for redesigning and improvement of delivery systems. Leaders of healthcare teams draw the whole picture of the team from local achievements, which can help in development of human resources and evaluation of the leader. Careful leadership transition is also essential to maintain the performance standards of a team. New South Wales Health CORE Values In this context, Health Education and Training Institute (HETI) of New South Wales provides certain values to ensure and improve the health and working life of the people and heath staff of New South Wales. They provide the CORE values that include Collaboration, Openness, Respect and Empowerment (Heti.nsw.gov.au, 2016). By Collaboration they intend to work as a team in an organisation, considering their leaders as role models and intend to improve continuously and encourage excellent performance output. They believe in open communication between the health care providers and the public. They encourage employee surveys and feedback of health care receivers and consider it as a toll for further improvement. Clear and honest communication is the motto of a team for future advancement. Respect towards the patient is another significant value that is emphasized upon. It is believed that the workplace efficiency can be ensured by including patients and health care providers equally into t he healthcare domain. Opinions and ideas of the patients need to be addressed without negligence. Dignity and respect towards patients and colleagues appraised to be the fundamental right of the same. Each employee is allowed to participate in the decision-making process and the idea of responsibility and accountability is elucidated to them. Although leaders are considered to make the final decisions every team member is given their due importance. Resources at hand should be utilised efficiently to meet individual as well as community expectations. I believe that the NSW CORE values are of utmost importance in the field of nursing education and for healthcare teams. Healthcare team can evolve effectively and reach their goals when these values are meeting. The values provide a constructive guideline for a healthcare team to build upon. Reflection Description I have gathered a lot of valuable information regarding healthcare teams from actively participating in in-services and workshops as well by meeting the Nursing and Midwifery Boards. The workshops and in-services training we attended did have an educational curriculum which had a team-based approach for providing healthcare. Having conversation with the Nursing and Midwifery Board (NMB) members was hugely productive in gaining an overall idea about the scenario of healthcare in Australia and the need to employs healthcare teams for optimum health outcomes of the patients. Feelings Before my experience in the workshops and with the NMB members I had scarce idea regarding the idea of healthcare teams and its importance in reaching long-standing health goals of the country. From the experiences, I gathered a comprehensive idea about how a collaborative approach can produce considerable difference in the productivity of the health care interventions. Realising the importance of the situation in regard to healthcare teams is going to be highly beneficial for me as a nursing professional. Evaluation From what I gathered it is conspicuous that the NMB boards and out nursing education system has a clear awareness about the situation and has already opted for team-based approach in providing healthcare to the public. The Nursing and Education Boards prioritize healthcare teams compared to an individual approach and educational frameworks are built to in accordance to that. Importance of mutual understanding among the various health professionals is highlighted and eventually establishing collaboration while providing intervention to the patients is emphasized repeatedly in training and education programs. However, from my perception of the situation improvements need to be made while providing experimental training to healthcare students. During trainings healthcare students do not gather a clear idea about collaborative care teams in real life scenarios. The healthcare teams must be modelled based on practical real life situations to prevent any disconnect when they move to work i n teams and as registered professionals. Further, the significance of the NSW CORE values is not being elucidated clearly in the workshops. Ensuring the healthcare teams abide by these values is indispensible for the desired outcomes of the teams. Conclusion The educational training is well equipped to provide healthcare students with the information to work in cooperation and alliance with various interdisciplinary health professionals for reaching a common goal directed for the patients. Providing professionals with practical life situation models where they need to work as a team rather than a individual is an area that needs to be improved and worked upon. Actions The government and the Healthcare Boards of Australia have to address the requirements of the situation to form functional healthcare teams. 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