A growing trend in the health care world is working on interprofessional health care teams. The goal is to work together to optimize the patients care and outcome. However, working on and interprofessional team is not always a cake walk. The teams consists of different people from different backgrounds who are most likely going to look at the patient through different eyes. To work on an interprofessional team, all professions must understand each other's strengths and weaknesses and have respect for what the other brings to the table.
As part of a Leadership retreat I attended Pharmacy, Nursing and PT students gathered to work together on patient cases.
We started the day with writing any preconceived notions we had about each others professions. We learned that as professions we did not truly understand what each other REALLY did in our jobs. When we learned the expertise each profession on the team possessed, we were able to gain more respect for each other.
When we worked on the patient cases it was now easy to see who would be responsible for each aspect of the case. A few main things we highlighted: We knew the nurses would be administering the patients medications and would have the most interaction with friends and family. We knew the pharmacists would be the patients advocate for receiving, taking and understanding their medications. We knew PT would help with rehabilitation of patients physically and with assessment of their home.
We were able to see that as a team, understanding how each profession could help the patient separately would benefit with the patients overall care.
That day we learned important strategies to working well on an interprofessional team. There needs to be communication, respect and organization of each profession's responsibilities and skills for the team to work well.
The best way of communication was being open and honest. Each profession needs to have respect and listen when needed. Communication was key that day in the Leadership retreat and applies to similar situations in all settings.
Here are the Pharmacy LEADERS Track members after the interprofessional Leadership Retreat.
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