Professional Roles and the Scope of Practice

Question: Explain why having a clear understanding of each other's professional roles and the scope of practice are necessary components of interprofessional practice. Answer: The essay is on the importance of understanding each others health professional roles and scope of practice while working in an interprofessional health care setting. Interprofessional practice is dependent on the collaborative approach of each professional member. It is important to know the role of each member so that medical staff shares their work accordingly to achieve common objectives in their scope of practice. The essay will explain the core competencies required for successful interprofessional health practice. It will give relevant examples on health care setting and demonstrate the benefit of knowing each other's role in interprofessional practice. Nurses work with other health professionals from other disciplines to provide patient-centered care. It is necessary to understand the role of each member and have appropriate communication skills to deliver work or services efficiently. Interprofessional competencies include appropriate use of clinical, communication and problem solving skills. Knowing the proper ways of communicating with health care team is a prerequiste skill required for health care practice. Different situation arises in health care sector where a team of medical staff attends to a patient during a critical surgery or operation. So learning to work with an interprofessional group is essential to improve care and deliver high quality health services. Collaborative practice in health care can positively impact health care issues. It helps in minimizing waiting time for patients, creates a healthy work environment, ensures patient safety and helps in proper disease management. It helps in the overall well-being of the community. The different kinds of practice available in health care are parallel practice, multidisciplinary practice, and interdisciplinary practice. Interdisciplinary practice is dependent on decision making of individuals from various disciplines. Therefore to avoid any error in practice, it is necessary to learn essential components of interprofessional practice (Gould et al., 2015). Learning interprofessional skills will have many benefits and positive outcome in interprofessional health practice. It helps a nurse to improve their standard of care and in achieving better patient outcome. It facilitates interprofessional team work when a nurse understands the role of other health professional and how they will work together to provide best care. It is also a critical element of medical practice. Different approach in interprofessional work helps in sharing of each others medical expertise with available health resources and marinating patients health. When a nurse will respect and understand the expertise of all health care professionals, it will lead to equal contribution of health care staff in the recovery of patients. It allows members to work according to their scope of practice. Any error in understanding roles can lead to serious consequences for both the health care staff and patient. It may lead to serious conflicts, burnout among team members and error in practice. Striking a balance between interdependence and need for professional autonomy is the way to strengthening the health care service department. It helps in creating understanding among health care staff that all members have a particular role, and they contribute in their own way in the health care responsibility entrusted to them. It develops trust among team members. Such interprofessional group can move in unification to achieve common goals and objectives. It helps in minimizing any confusion and reducing barriers in the health care delivery (Lytle, 2016). This section will discuss the core competency required for nurse in interprofessional collaborative practice. The very first responsibility of a nurse and other medical team is to learn the values or ethics for interprofessional health practice. It enables a nurse to work with other physicians and doctors to maintain an environment of mutual respect and shared values. Interprofessional practice is dependent on a smart strategy to effectively utilize each members expertise and ensure that nobody is underutilized (Margolis et al., 2015). In this context, professionals use the knowledge of their own roles and other members part appropriately to address the needs of patient as well as the health care organization. One of the most valuable skills in interprofessional health practice is learning accurate communication skills to pass the relevant message to each member as and when required. Good formal and non-formal communication is way to collaborative patient-centered care. Many nurses a re nervous of speaking up and asking any questions in case of any doubt in their work. Speaking up and defining role is extremely necessary to provide holistic care to patient. There is more chance of conflict in interprofessional work, but the need for nurse is to know the ways to skillfully negotiate things and overcome any difference in opinion arising among health care professional (Kitto et al., 2015). The interprofessional competency framework in health care describes the skills and values that shape the judgment requires for collaborative health care practice. The competency domain is centered on the theme of interprofessional communication, patient-centered care, teamwork, collaborative leadership, role clarification, and conflict resolution in the medical team (Thistlethwaite et al., 2014). Role clarification is an essential component of interprofessional practice. This can be achieved by nurses by identifying and respecting the diversity of role and expertise of each member in different fields. It is necessary to communicate roles and skills in appropriate language and integrate them seamlessly into accurate models of health care service delivery. Each medical staff should understand each others role to determine where unique ideas of physicians and surgeons can be applied and where shared contribution is necessary .To work in full capacity, equitable distribution of workload is also an essential prerequisite. It avoids burnout in nurses and enables them to work in full capacity (Doll et al., 2013). It is also necessary for nurses to make the patient aware of their health problem and explaining them the benefits of available treatment options. For a practice that is patient centered, the participation of patient is of utmost importance. Nurses should share Information with a patient in a way that removes their apprehension about treatment procedure and convince them to undergo treatment process for improving their health and removing morbidity associated with disease. For example, when a patient is about to undergo surgery, the whole process is dependent on a group of the medical team. While operating on a patient, many other medical staffs assist them during the surgery. Nurse have their role of preparing and sterilizing equipment for operation; junior doctors assist them during surgery, some monitors the vital sign of patient before surgery, some are involved in preparing diagnosis report before surgery. Therefore high standard of health care is given to patient due to the con tribution of all these members of the medical team. They ensure patient-centered care by informing about any risk associated with surgery to the patient prior to the operation (Reeves et al., 2013). The essay summarizes the importance of understanding health care staffs role for effective interprofessional collaborative practice. It explained the benefits of learning interprofessional skills for a nurses and medical staffs to achieve positive outcome in practice. It highlighted the core competency that is necessary for effective teamwork in health care setting. The viewpoint was emphatically stated by an example of interprofessional practice demonstrated by team of health care professionals in health care organization. Thus it can be concluded that if nurses develop this skills at the beginning of their career, then they can work with physicians and other medical staff smoothly and without any conflict. Reference Doll, J., Packard, K., Furze, J., Huggett, K., Jensen, G., Jorgensen, D., ... Maio, A. (2013). 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