Interprofessional Practice - Essay Example

Running head: Introprofessional Practice Introprofessional Practice [Writer’s Name] [Institution’s Name] Introprofessional Practice Introduction There is already a connection among the professional nurses due to the common bond of taking care of the patients and families, and several of the nursing-specific practices as well as artefacts which are usual in the profession. Such a connection provides them with an extraordinary opportunity of coming together and, by means of taking care, of creating higher-level expressions of human interaction. Although people working together may be associated by means of some common work, being collaborative means there is a stronger effect (Duffy, 2008, p.87). It means that there is a commitment of working together and standing by each other. Through being collaborative the persons relate to each other and are able to attain mutual objectives. Interprofessional Practice “Interprofessional practice refers to a highly integrated framework for collaboration among professionals” (Geva, Barsky, & Westernoff, 2000, p.3). This term interprofessional gives a meaning of extremely integrated style toward evaluation and intervention, and in this approach the professionals of various backgrounds get together for working with the customers, students or patients. The professionals acquire common goals at workplace and at the same time they provide differential professional involvements. By means of evaluation and intervention they are able to keep up with the maintenance of organization and collaboration. Why Interprofessional Practice? Since several decades there has been some debate in the health and services about the position and the significance related to interprofessional team-working (Xyrichis & Lowton, 2008). In 1920 it was recommended by the Ministry of Health in the United Kingdom that through team-working there could be best results in the deliverance of primary care, and its committee put forward the proposal that the general practitioners (GPs) should be working in teams with the other healthcare professionals in the health care centres (Milne, 1980) There are certain reasons behind the professionals preferring to work in teams. The following paragraphs will illustrate some of them. First of all, there has been the development of interprofessional practice as a response to the increasingly specialized kind of human services that we are getting and the disintegration of resource distribution. In the case of proper integration, various orientations of professionals make sure that the person is being understood in a better manner, that there is a increased carefulness in the analysis of the problem and that the service being offered is improved. Now the cases that are being encountered by the professionals are seen to be more and more complicated, thus leading to the requirement of cooperation among the professionals having corresponding knowledge. There are also supposed to be efficient enough structures for interprofessional collaboration. This is a requirement if we are to prevent failing communication among the professionals which can result in unwarranted pain and distress for the customer, the student, the patient or any relative. Another important reason behind interprofessional collaboration is that it results in highly cost efficient employment of restricted resources in health, social, educational and legal mechanisms. A Model for Interprofessional Consultation Steinberg (1989) has a background in the subjects of psychiatry and psychotherapy. He has investigated the manners and measures through which the professionals and patients can cooperate and work together. His basis of this was the perspective that interprofessional consultation is a kind of collaborative work. Although there is a probability of good consultation being educational, consultation exclusively leads to a provision of enquiry into the “fundamental nature of problems and ways of responding to them” (Steinberg, 1989, p.14). Thus, consultation can lead to novel attitudes for the comprehension of problems and also to original management tactics. Through consultation one can, without any difficulty, discover the areas in which an institution or organisation may be failing and wherein there may not be enough training, staffing or supervision. It is the argument of Steinberg (1989) that by means of the different systems which he has suggested, consultation can be said to be a highly suitable manner of bringing together people of various talents and knowledge. Even though this model has been seen to be a teaching and learning experience dependent whose basis is a mutual evaluation, it also provides with a direction in which the professionals can efficiently work together in practice. Operation of Interprofessional Practice No one model exists that can be related to interprofessional practice (Leathard, 1994). There are certain variations associated with it. A hospital team has its main objective of providing quality care for the physical as well and mental health requirements of its patients. Conventionally, the hospitals have been making use of comparatively formal and hierarchical frameworks for the determination of which professionals are to assume what part. Inside such a kind of structure ultimate duty as well as legal liability is delegated to the physician for the care that the team provides. The rest of the members of that team offer advice and treatment according to the knowledge that they have. Practically, it is a professional who is not a physician who has the best and the most relevant of knowledge for some case. Whether formally or the other way, this professional is the one assuming leadership for that particular case. In the majority of the hospital environment the teams get together regularly, on a weekly or biweekly basis. During all the discussions the members of the team investigate the condition of the patient, discuss the different options available and attempt at developing a further appropriate and understandable decision that any member could get on his/her own. One example of interprofessional practice can be in the area of education. In an educational environment comes the university ethics committee. This committee has the responsibility of reviewing research proposals that the faculty and students submit and then to comment on in order to make sure that certain ethical standards are being met with. These teams usually have a wide range of professionals, and all of them have their own comprehension regarding ethics and morals. In a social service agency, the operation of interprofessional teams is usually at different levels of practice, which means, with individuals, families, groups, and communities (Davies, 2008). Several times what happens is that the case managers are given the responsibility of the coordination of services and they are also supposed to make sure that the customers are having a particular professional for assisting them with any of their problems. An example here can be taken of a child welfare case. In this case a youth counsellor can be assisting an adolescent plan for independent living, while on the other hand a family counsellor would advise such that the adolescent returns to his/her parents. There are also case management meetings, usually in the presence of the client. These are for providing assistance to everyone in committing to a constant intervention plan. Majority of the undergraduate social work and human services agendas place an emphasis upon generalist practice. to a certain degree this does reduce the specialisation and fragmentation which has happened in the other areas of practice. Even though encouragement is provided to more of specialisation in graduate education, there is still support provided to generalist and interprofessional activities. Considering interprofessionalism in the justice system it can be said that the majority of the lawyers make a reference to the clients for other professional assistance instead of working in teams. According to convention, lawyers have been given their education for the representation of the legal interest of the personal clients. In addition to this, there were the ethical standards that provided encouragement to the lawyers of limiting their practice just to the legal matters, and dissuaded them from collaborating with, and providing confidential data to the other professionals. There was no link between legal services and psychosocial services. Nevertheless, it is since the 1980s that there has been the emergence of teams in certain areas of justice; for instance, there are the probation officers as well as different kinds of community-based counsellors that provide assistance to the probationers in maters resulting in criminal activity. Other than this there are therapeutic teams that have been working in prisons for rehabilitating the convicted criminals; there are lawyers, mediators and social workers who provide assistance to the families in dealing with the interlinked legal and psychosocial matters such as adoption and divorce. Lawyers and social workers are seen to be helping the refugee claimants while the lawyers get together with the mental health profession and work together on criminal court cases or mental hearings. Conclusion As there is the development of formal and informal measures of interprofessional collaboration, there would be requirement on the part of the professionals, who work in different fields, of opening to novel routes for the conduction of their practice. Such new chances, although can be quite interesting and worthwhile, can provide great challenges to the professionals. References Davies, M. (2008). The Blackwell encyclopaedia of social work. Wiley-Blackwell. Duffy, J. R. (2008). Quality Caring in Nursing: Applying Theory to Clinical Practice, Education, and Leadership. New York: Springer Publishing Company. Geva, E., Barsky, A. E., & Westernoff, F. (2000). Interprofessional practice with diverse populations: cases in point. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Publishing Group. Leathard, A. (1994). Going inter-professional: working together for health and welfare. Florence: Routledge. Milne, M.A. (1980). Training for team care. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 5, 579–589. Xyrichis, A., & Lowton, K. (2008). What fosters or prevents interprofessional teamworking in primary and community care? A literature review. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 45(1):140–153. Read More