Why is collaboration important in healthcare

When a nurse can contact the primary doctor any time in an emergency on Hucu. Faster Treatment. Much of healthcare can include a lot of waiting for example, patients waiting for physicians who in turn are waiting for their colleagues to get back to them with their advice and consultations. Again, Hucu. Improved Staff Relationships. Every health profession has its own culture and philosophy. When organizations add power structures, some members are able to speak more than others.

That is not favourable to the patient or for the staff morale. Interprofessional collaboration evens this out for everyone and acknowledges that everyone is playing a vital role on the care team.

The sense of community can boost staff retention and recruitment. This helps highlight hard-working staff members and create transparency in their recognition. Employees in most industries are connected to each other through communication platforms. All they need is a smartphone.

This is because their employers have not invested in a HIPAA compliant communication platform which makes them rely on outdated technology like landlines, pagers, and fax machines. It also helps to have hospital communication technology that lets care teams communicate and collaborate seamlessly and securely on the go or at the point of care — via text, voice, or video.

In healthcare, communication gaps can have costly consequences — from missed symptoms to misdiagnoses to medication errors.

In fact, medical errors cause , deaths each year. EHR notes can help, but clinical communication is vital. That means having a group conversation, looping in a pharmacist for some interprofessional collaboration, and ensuring nurses have all the information they need to treat patients safely.

Studies have shown that interprofessional collaboration in healthcare can help to reduce preventable adverse drug reactions, decrease mortality rates, and optimize medication dosages.

Much of healthcare is a waiting game. Patients wait for physicians, while physicians wait for other physicians to provide consultations, or for radiology to send back lab results. Communication delays frustrate patients and waste valuable time, giving conditions time to worsen. Again, interprofessional collaboration bridges the gaps. So does clinical communication technology. Overall a care team collaboration platform delivers the right information to the right people at the right time via secure messaging, voice, or video.

Interprofessional collaboration in healthcare helps to prevent medication errors, improve the patient experience and thus HCAHPS , and deliver better patient outcomes — all of which can reduce healthcare costs. It also helps hospitals save money by shoring up workflow redundancies and operational inefficiencies.

By improving the interprofessional collaboration model between its nurses and physicians, one hospital cut its fall rate in half, decreased average length-of-stay by 0. At another hospital in the study, interprofessional collaboration significantly improved surgical start times and prevented delays that led to wasted hours over the previous four years.

Every health profession has its own subculture, knowledge base, and philosophy. Third, because teamwork is centered on solid communication, patients and their families sometimes feel more at ease and report they accept treatments and feel more satisfied with their health care [ 6 , 7 ]. Health workers are also found to be more satisfied with their work [ 13 ]. A study found nurses who go through successful team building efforts are more satisfied with their work [ 13 ].

Teamwork and team training is now seen as essential part of preservice education. Because learning how to communicate effectively and work together can be time consuming, learning teamwork within the context of medical curricula will make students better prepared [ 14 ]. Learning the fundamentals of teamwork and collaborative care helps students better understand patient needs — especially in areas where social and health issues abound [ 14 ].

A program in India trains nurses working with HIV patients to work within many roles: counselor, lab technician and outreach worker [ 14 ].

The World Health Organization [ 11 ]. What is helpful is that many programs teach problem-based learning, allowing students to work together, share information, and solve clinical problems as a team. Salas E et al. Teams: their training and performance. Norwood, NJ, Ablex, Manser, T. Canadian Health Services Research Foundation. Policy synthesis and recommendations. CHSRF, Kalisch, Beatrice J. Mickan, Sharon M. Virani, Tazim.