5 Benefits of Interprofessional Collaboration in Healthcare
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Modern healthcare is actually a team sport, especially in hospitals. The typical inpatient actually experience features a cadre of health professionals working together to deliver quality care as well as stellar patient experience. Except, how much are they actually working together? Unless they actually have regular meetings or secure digital communications tools, the solution is likely not much.
That’s a issue, because as medicine becomes increasingly specialized, care teams become more crowded, and interprofessional collaboration in healthcare is more important than ever.
So, what exactly is interprofessional collaboration in healthcare? Why should it be a priority for your organization? And what hospital communication technology do you actually need to keep your team connected — across health professions, shifts, and even locations?
What Is Interprofessional Collaboration in Healthcare?
If we actually talk about interprofessional collaboration, the WHO further defines it as “multiple health workers from different types of professional backgrounds actually working along side patients, families, caregivers, as well as communities to deliver the very best quality of care.”
You could argue that’s what hospital teams have always done. But interprofessional collaboration is actually about more than data sharing as well as efficient communication between nurses and physicians. It requires all care team members to interact with the patient and with each other, and it requires leaders to put their egos aside for the greater good of the patient.
Furthermore, effective interprofessional collaboration actually promotes the active participation of each and every discipline in patient care, where all disciplines are actually working together as well as fully engaging patients and those who support them, and also leadership on the team adapts based on patient requirements … It fosters respect for the disciplinary contributions of all types of professionals.
Interprofessional collaboration in healthcare isn’t a new concept. In 1972, the Institute of Medicine called for team-based patient care as a way to improve patient outcomes and safety. The idea took quite a while to catch on, but it’s been a trending topic since 2009, when the nation’s leading healthcare education associations partnered in order to form the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC).
Since then, the WHO or World Health Organization and other global healthcare organizations have repeatedly stressed the necessity for interprofessional education as a way to not only improve quality of care for individual patients, however also for global health populations.
Benefits of Interprofessional Collaboration in Healthcare
Why is interprofessional collaboration essential? Because when you actually create a collaborative culture (and put communication strategies and technology in place to support that culture), you:
1. Improve patient care and outcomes
A patient walks into the emergency department (ED) complaining of chest pains. An ED doctor actually checks him out, followed by a cardiologist, who further orders some tests and waits on the results from the radiologist, who then confirms what both doctors suspected: the patient is actually having a heart attack.
After having emergency surgery, the patient spends a day within the ICU, where a team of nurses look after him in 12-hour shifts, before transferring him to a cardiac unit, where he meets his new team of rotating nurses. Each morning throughout his stay, a hospitalist (or even perhaps his primary care doctor) actually stops by during rounds. So does the cardiologist, and since the patient has diabetes and COPD, an endocrinologist and pulmonologist. Depending on the patient’s recovery and lifestyle, physical therapists, dieticians, and social workers might even actually get involved.
Each of these people actually has a unique perspective and valuable insights about the patient. They notice different symptoms and consider different possibilities. Together, they have a more comprehensive, holistic view of the patient. But these people are rarely, if ever, in the same room. At best, they share data via EHR, but they often lack a way to communicate directly in real-time.
Along with care team meetings, several hospitals now encourage team-based, patient-centered rounds that actually include the primary doctor, bedside nurse, specialized physicians, as well as any other relevant team members. This actually helps to foster both patient-centered care as well as interprofessional collaboration in healthcare.
It also helps to actually 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.
2. Reduce medical errors
In healthcare, communication gaps can have costly consequences — from missed symptoms to misdiagnoses to medication errors. In fact, medical errors cause 250,000 deaths each and every year. According to Johns Hopkins, it’s the third leading cause of death in the U.S.
It’s easy to see how accidents can happen, with multiple doctors prescribing multiple medications, and numerous nurses delivering those medications. EHR notes can help, but clinical communication is significant. That means having a group conversation, looping in a pharmacist for some interprofessional collaboration, and ensuring nurses have all the information they really need to treat patients safely.
Studies have shown that interprofessional collaboration in healthcare can help to actually reduce preventable adverse drug reactions, decrease mortality rates, and optimize medication dosages.
3. Start treatment faster
Much of healthcare is a waiting game. Patients wait for physicians, while physicians actually wait for other physicians in order to provide consultations, or for radiology to send back lab results.
Communication delays frustrate patients as well as waste valuable time, giving conditions time to really worsen. That’s why the Joint Commission
actually continually lists “improve staff communication” as well as “get important test results to the correct staff person on time” as a National Patient Safety Goal.
Again, interprofessional collaboration bridges the gaps. So does clinical communication technology. It keeps care team members connected (so they will reach out to that physician who hasn’t entered notes into the EHR) and automates alerts (so they receive text messages when critical lab results come in). Overall a care team collaboration platform actually delivers the right information to the right people at the right time that to via secure messaging, voice, or even video.
4. Reduce inefficiencies and healthcare costs
Interprofessional collaboration in healthcare actually helps to prevent medication errors, improve the patient experience (and thus HCAHPS) as well as deliver better patient outcomes, all of which can further 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 0.6 days, increased annualized bed turn by 20 percent, and increased discharges before noon by 20 percent — according to a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation study of 20 hospitals. At another hospital in the study, interprofessional collaboration quite significantly improved surgical start times and at the same time prevented delays that led to 700 wasted hours over the previous 4 years.
5. Improve staff relationships and job satisfaction
Every health profession actually has its own subculture, knowledge base as well as philosophy. When you add power structures, some members’ voices get prioritized over others. That’s not good for the patient or for staff morale.
Interprofessional collaboration levels the playing field and acknowledges that everyone plays a vital role on the care team. That sense of community and camaraderie can also boost staff retention and recruitment.