Based on your experience, what interprofessional strategies for health promotion have you seen? How can interprofessional teams develop action plans to promote health for any given population? Provide rationale to support your response.
Expert Answer and Explanation
Inter-professional Strategies of Health Promotion
Most nurses are convinced that they are the key players in improving the health of a patient, but the truth is that they can never manage to make a single achievement on their own. Physicians, dentists, psychologists, and surgeons also take a major role in treatment of patients (Arnold & Boggs, 2019). Other people who also help the patients indirectly include laboratory personnel, allied health officials, pharmacists, midwifes, and medical waste handlers. It is therefore necessary for a healthcare unit to have proper strategies for promoting health across the different professions (Arnold & Boggs, 2019).
Based on my experience, there are several strategies of using inter-professional teamwork to promote health. The first one is proper communication among members of different professions in a healthcare environment, where there are firm grounds of communication in which doctors, for instance, can pass relevant patient information to the nurses. Another strategy is collaborative decision making, where the expertise of every profession may be applied in deciding on a specific issue. This coordination leads to a synergistic effect of the combined skills of all members of staff.
Delivering action plans by inter-professional teams is often guided by the goals of the organization, as well as the universal goals of health (Diwan, Perdue, Lee, & Grossman, 2016). For example, they have to always keep in mind that they are called to provide safe and effective patient care to the patients regardless of the disciplinary roles they have to play. Also, they have to keep in mind that leaders in all the fields need to be used as the primary mode of communication to their department. This helps in achieving holistic patient-centered care.
References
Arnold, E. C., & Boggs, K. U. (2019). Interpersonal Relationships E-Book: Professional Communication Skills for Nurses. Saunders.
Diwan, S., Perdue, M., Lee, S. E., & Grossman, B. R. (2016). Health promotion practice and interprofessional education in aging: Senior wellness fairs. Gerontology & geriatrics education, 37(2), 145-166.
Evidence Based Practice in Nursing
Evidence based practice entails the use of the best current evidence in making decisions about patient treatment and care (Schmidt & Brown, 2017). With the rapid evolution of technology, the health system needs are evolving, and so are the solutions (Dang & Dearholt, 2017). In my organization, the nursing staff plays a critical role in incorporating evidence based practice into the healthcare system. This is especially because they are the people who are closest to the patients and they definitely have to keep consulting with other healthcare staff.
My colleagues and the entire nursing staff value highly evidence based practice since they have to apply evidence based problem solving techniques when delivering care of any type. Also, I have been keen enough to note that nurse leaders are always careful when inducting new nurses to train them the basic skills that are required to undertake nursing related work. They always make sure that nurses are able to connect the most recent scientific evidence with their clinical practices, so as to ensure that healthcare is standardized.
Among the skills that nurses in my institution are trained so as to be able to handle evidence based techniques are the ability to identify knowledge gaps, formulate relevant research questions and conduct literature searches efficiently (Schmidt & Brown, 2017). They are also taught the specific ways of applying rules of evidence in determining the valitidty of studies. They are always taught how to keenly examine facts before concluding that a given practice or research is viable for application. I believe it is one of the things that has contributed to increasing the clinical outcomes.
References
Dang, D., & Dearholt, S. L. (2017). Johns Hopkins nursing evidence-based practice: Model and guidelines. Sigma Theta Tau.
Schmidt, N. A., & Brown, J. M. (2017). Evidence-based practice for nurses. Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Shared Decision Making and Health Literacy
The ability of a patient to provide a detailed account of their condition, also called health literacy, is one of the most important elements of quality healthcare. If for instance, a patient comes to the hospital complaining of joint pains, headaches, fever, and diarrhea, he should be given relevant information about the state of his health, even before the medication process begins (unless it is an emergency) (Brabers et al., 2017). In cases of chronic illnesses, patient should be involved in deciding which type of medication or therapy that they should undergo. This concept of choice, also called shared decision making, has improved healthcare delivery as patients feel that they are part and parcel of the healing process, and are often willing to collaborate with the nurses.
In shared decision making, healthcare givers share with the patients the best available evidence when making a critical decision, and they allow the patient to have informed preference of the treatment they are about to face (Seo, Goodman, Politi, Blanchard, & Kaphingst, 2016). Patients with low health literacy may not be able to decide for themselves, and hence the nurse practitioners taking care of them are also tasked with educating them accordingly. In motivational interviewing, veteran patents perform several analyses about their health, and this allows them to monitor behavior change and do the necessary reporting (Seo, Goodman, Politi, Blanchard, & Kaphingst, 2016). Using best practice models, it is easy to understand the congruence of the treatment that physicians give to patients, and this makes it easy for patients to effectively regulate changes in their health statuses.
References
Brabers, A. E., Rademakers, J. J., Groenewegen, P. P., Van Dijk, L., & De Jong, J. D. (2017). What role does health literacy play in patients’ involvement in medical decision-making? PloS one, 12(3), e0173316.
Seo, J., Goodman, M. S., Politi, M., Blanchard, M., & Kaphingst, K. A. (2016). Effect of health literacy on decision-making preferences among medically underserved patients. Medical Decision Making, 36(4), 550-556.
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