HLT 307V Grand Canyon Week 3 DQ 1

The focus of this week’s readings is interdisciplinary collaboration. How does Freshman, in the Collaborative Practice and Primary Care textbook, define interdisciplinary collaboration in health care organizations? Is this definition consistent with the current practice in your organization? What would need to change in order to improve interdisciplinary collaboration in your department?

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Interdisciplinary collaboration in health care organizations

Introduction

Health care organizations are challenged to develop new ways of working with specialists to improve patient outcomes, reduce costs and maintain quality. One way is through a collaborative approach where the three main disciplines of medicine (clinical practice, research and education) work together on common goals. Collaboration can be defined as a cooperative effort between two or more people who work toward an end goal in which each person contributes what they do best. In health care settings, this may mean that physicians work closely with nurses or other non-physician providers on the delivery of healthcare services.

Collaboration

Collaboration is essential to the effective delivery of health care services. It can improve patient outcomes, manage risk, and increase efficiency in the delivery of health services. However, collaboration has been identified as one of the most challenging aspects of health care organizations due to its complexity and lack of standardization across settings and disciplines (1).

The benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration have been well documented in research studies including those related to diagnosis, treatment planning, case management or coordination; however there are still questions regarding how best to implement these interventions within an organization’s context (2). Interdisciplinary teams often require more time than single-specialty groups due to their complexity but this may also result in decreased efficiency with reduced productivity due specifically on communication barriers faced by practitioners from different backgrounds working together on common problems (3).

Benefits of Collaboration

There are many benefits of collaboration, including:

• Improved patient outcomes.

• Improved organizational efficiencies.

• Reduced costs.

• Improved patient satisfaction

Challenges to Collaboration

In a health care environment, collaboration is often difficult because of the following challenges:

• Lack of trust. Trust can be difficult to establish if there are differences in language and culture between collaborators, or if they do not share similar skills or knowledge. Some people may feel more comfortable working alone than with others who are different from themselves. If you have difficulty trusting your colleagues, it’s important to find ways to build confidence in each other so that everyone feels safe to share ideas and resources freely with one another.

• Differences in language and culture: Your team members may not be able to communicate effectively with each other because they speak different languages (e.g., English vs Spanish), live in different countries/regions (e.g., USA vs Mexico), or belong to different ethnic groups within the same country/region (e.g., black Americans vs white Americans). This can make it difficult for all parties involved when trying coordinate tasks across departments at work since everyone brings their own unique ideas into play during meetings where decisions need making about how best proceed as part of overall strategy planing process.”

Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Health Care Organizations

Interdisciplinary collaboration is a key focus for health care organizations, and it’s necessary to improve patient outcomes and organizational efficiencies. In fact, interdisciplinary collaboration has been identified as an essential component of the patient-centered medical home model.

Interdisciplinary teams can help solve complex problems by bringing together specialists from different disciplines (e.g., nursing, medicine) who have knowledge about different aspects of the body or disease process they’re trying to understand or help manage. For example:

• A team might include a cardiologist who understands heart conditions; an infectious disease specialist who has experience treating HIV/AIDS; an oncologist with expertise in cancer treatment options; and dietitians who specialize in nutrition counseling patients undergoing chemotherapy treatments

Interdisciplinary collaboration is a key focus for health care organizations and contributes to improved patient outcomes as well as organizational efficiencies.

Interdisciplinary collaboration is a key focus for health care organizations and contributes to improved patient outcomes as well as organizational efficiencies.

• Collaboration can help improve the quality and safety of care by reducing duplication, improving communication, increasing access to resources, and helping patients understand their condition better.

• It also improves the efficiency of staff time by allowing them to spend more time on tasks that are relevant or important rather than repeating tasks from one department to another or having multiple people do something at once (such as someone calling in sick). This leads to higher productivity among employees who are able to concentrate on what they do best instead of wasting time on tasks they don’t enjoy doing at all!

Conclusion

Interdisciplinary collaboration is a key focus for health care organizations and contributes to improved patient outcomes as well as organizational efficiencies. We have seen the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration, and will continue to see these benefits in the future.