Medical Emergency Team - Essay Example

Research across nations has shown that a risk management approach, leadership skills, and other criteria utilised in a teambuilding activity may prove to be very efficient in implementing such a team in teaching hospitals (Lee et al., 1995); however, although possibility and feasibility of advanced practice nurses as leaders of such teams have been explored in some studies (Jenkins and Lindsey, 2010), in reality there has been no such attempts in creating such a team in a District General Hospital.

The introduction above is actually the background of a project proposal to introduce a Medical Emergency Team in the District Hospital where this author works. Since this concept is new and unknown, and the hospital infrastructure is not yet ready for that purpose, it would need extensive organizational changes and changes in attitudes of the healthcare professionals engaged in different aspects of care delivery in this hospital. Thus implementation of such a programme would need provisions for planning and execution of the different stages of the plan.

By organisation, it means the policy, process, people, principles, and promoters, since launching a new service would need manipulations in all these areas at the organisational levels. Obviously, while planning this project, all key concepts at the background of such a service must be incorporated, although some local changes must be made to suit the local needs of the hospital at the district level, which would definitely vary from the needs of a tertiary care hospital in the same area.The project would be feasible only when it would be grounded on the key concepts and not principles derived from the prevalent national health and social care policies.

However, only this could not achieve the objectives of such a team unless it works on the principles of team building and integrated effort towards building partnerships among the stakeholders through appropriate leadership skills that bring the best of team work and change management. This author is an advanced nurse practitioner for the last three and a half years in this hospital. As already known, this position allows independent, autonomous, and accountable practice in different clinical areas including 20 years of work in the Accident and Emergency.

This position allowed sufficient exposure to different emergent clinical scenarios that may be encountered in practice, and rapid response was absolutely essential in such care deliveries. It is very important to note that such care is possible through teamwork only, and it is called Medical Emergency Team. The basic tenet of such a project would be very collaborative teamwork based on as recommended by Kerridge and Saul (2003) continuing education on recognition of acute illness and processes involving audit and education.

They must recognise the areas where in-hospital response to acute and critical illness outside the ICU is suboptimal. This author's experience in working in team, which is used to work in the hospital in day/night teams may this become useful for such projects. In this proposed project, there will be a team of 20-plus advanced nurse