Team Work in Nursing
INTRODUCTION:
The health care sector includes a sector of nursing which mainly focuses on the care of individuals, communities, families so that they may attain a complete recovery of health and also the quality of the life.
A nurse develops a plan of complete care and working with physicians, the patient, therapists as well as with the patient’s family.
The safety of patient and the stability of workplace comes under the control of nursing staffs which makes it an important factor in a health care organization.
The process of collateral working with a group of people to achieve a certain goal is known as teamwork.
It is an important factor in nursing profession as it includes working with different people at a same time, which includes colleagues, doctors, patients etc.
In a team work people tries to cooperate by using their individual skills as well as providing any constructive feedback without any kind of conflict between the members. Nursing team works brings high level of job satisfaction within the organization.
Situational awareness is a general perception of the surroundings with respect to time and place (Endsley & Jones, 2012). It is an awareness of the status when any of the variable changes such as time or place.
It involves the awareness of what is happening in the surroundings and to understand the situation or events to take goals and objectives immediately or in future. Poor decision making can lead to serious consequences.
Discussion:
Team work in nursing:
Teamwork plays an important role for those who work together as healthcare professionals who learn and train together by delivering multi-professional team based factors.
The area of interruptions is one of the main factors considered in nursing. Delivering nursing care as a team based performance is occurring in the changing environment in nursing work field (Kelly & Tazbir, 2014).
One healthcare organization provides patients with continuity of care by using a nursing team, therefore producing a grasp of handling more than one task-oriented care model.
In team nursing, potential caregiving has increased, and it also provided the members with the lesson for developing responsibilities.
The need to work with collaboration and cooperation with responsibilities has grown to certain levels which made them to deliver and execute certain plans, evaluation of the situations regarding the care and the health of the patients (Hall, 2005).
The proper function of a team depends upon the team leader, who plays an important role in maintaining the team’s effectiveness and developing a sense of responsibility, which in turn increases the team’s performance. The main role of a team leader is to evaluate monitor the team members and their care giving procedure.
In this way, a leader can effectively take decisions regarding the patient’s condition. The nursing team should have the proper experience in handling cases in any adverse situation. It should be clear while making conversations which are important for care giving and team performance.
Different interpretations are given regarding the team performance with the types of team approaches described in literature context which enrolled partnership in nursing and zone based on acuity of patients. Teamwork in nursing provides a high quality of caregiving and collaborative work (Bach & Ellis, 2011).
In some cases it has been found that a patient may suffer the extent just due to lack of proper collaboration among the team members which may lead to the death of the patient.
It has been found that they are not neglectful or not incompetent in their work. Still, they lack proper collaboration among the team members, staff lacked proper sense of working as a team and also the adverse situation which resulted in rapid deterioration.
Sometimes one fail to recognize what is happening around them and also ignores the clinical information or lack of conversations among them in a proper way.
One cannot calculate the passage of time. Rescue during this time is most important which completely depends upon the professionals of healthcare and their capability to respond in that adverse situation.
To overcome it they must do work in a co-ordinate manner. It has been found that fatigue, danger, stress and loss of life are taken as the consequences of error, which should be avoided in a health care organization and this completely depends upon the professionals of which nurse plays the major role in taking care of the situation.
The various models that are used to look at an event or experience are:
- First to think what happened.
- Second, to think why it happened.
- Third how it happened.
- Fourth, to think about how to overcome the situation.
Situational awareness in nursing:
In health care and patient safety nurses are the key players who have constant distractions from the work then also they try to ensure the safe outcome.
Situational awareness implies the adverse or normal situation of which the nurse is completely aware of and known every detail information.
This teaches the principle of patient’s safety and intuitive thinking among the nurse along the perceptual awareness (Endsley & Garland, 2000).
Situational awareness consists of three elements for patient’s safety
- The environmental elements use inputs with all five types of senses.
- Entire knowledge of the Present situation
- The ability to take risk.
Situational awareness includes access to health risks and gives support in timely decision-making. It also includes the use of OR and the intensive care unit. The health care professionals also become aware of the safety of the patients and the environment.
The environment includes the position of the healthcare worker and the environment they are working in. organizations also take care of the shifts of the professionals as well as the handovers, staffing , management and authority, policies and protocols, training and supervisions of residents, gradients, consultations.
Human factors also include the situation according to the environmental factors of the place and how to deal with it to accomplish the goal. Next, consideration of the individuals or the teams that are working in that situation is required.
All these factors work interdependently to produce effectiveness in the care giving, workload and stress. Situational awareness is thought as one of the safest process in achievement of patient’s satisfaction. It is not always that a situational awareness causes good performance but it provides a way for the betterment of the situation.
Activities of situational awareness;
- Get information– After receiving any patient one should have the full knowledge about the patient that from where he is, the problems and the vital signs of the disease, what tools are there to work with and the most important is that to know what is going on, thinking of what to do next and with whom to work.
- Understanding of the situation– as soon as the information has been collected, one needs to go through that, and next is to assess the situation the patient is in. One needs to assign the meaning of the collected information. The collection of the information should be in such a form so that it can be used to build a complete picture of the situation. Next is to think about how to diagnose the patient and to make further decisions regarding the position of the patient.
- Think ahead– the final activity that completes the situational awareness is to make complete assessment or thinking ahead. This activity involves the collection of the information and understanding it, then using it for decision-making in that situation in the present and future. Accuracy depends upon all the stages based on the information collected and the timeline given. This thinking activity provides a proper decision making and according to that the proper actions taken by the organization or the health care professionals.
Decision making:
There is proof that nurses play a pivotal role in the decision-making process related to clinical problems. There are also well established theory which provides evidences regarding the decision making process of a nurse (Standing, 2010). There are two different models of decision making, which falls into two different paradigms
- The systematic positivist stance
- The intuitive humanist stance
Both are relate to the analytical decision making process which distinguish the novice and expert decision making process. The literature review supports the process of decision making by the health care professionals in both quantitative as well as qualitative way.
The factor that implies in nurse is the well documentation of the collected information about the patient which helps them to explore the decision making process more accurately. Nurses should apply the think method protocol while making decisions in acute care units.
Health organizations provide files to the nurse which provided an extras support to the nursing team o recognize the diagnosis and use it during the think aloud method while the decision making process. Decision making is neither analytical nor purely intuitive it is more a cognitive method as it helps the decision maker to be more appropriate.
Clinical decision-making also involves diagnostic reasoning as well as clinical judgment. Entire knowledge is required to fulfil the two systems. So the level of decision making also depends on the expertise of the nurse.
The nurse should have a more informative decision-making style, which makes them more effective in the field. Proper planning and implementation of the plans are the key factors which make a nurse more effective in decision making (Gurbutt, 2006).
The nurse should be aware of the situation while making any decisions. The concept of the situation and the proper implementation are used extensively for making decisions safely. Special care is given to those patients who are in severe condition.
During the decision-making process, the documentation helps to identify the components to take steps in the decision-making process, which allows more appropriate information about the progress of the patient.
The model used during decision making is the
- Medications that are prescribed
- Supportive needs
- Situational awareness.
The nurse is the main body who are known of these above needs and aware of any medical orders newly implied which makes them a key decision maker. For example- why the patient or when the patient needs the medications and how often. For those patients whose conditions are severe the nurse needs a mental model while taking decision that involves more complex and attentive way to approach the situation. Therefore the complete decision making process depends on the proper observation of the nurse and the situation. This proper decision-making process provides the best effectiveness in patient satisfaction.
Conclusions:
Nurses are the key factors of a health care organization. They are the main body for caregiving and for the satisfaction of the patient. Teamwork involves the accuracy of a case as well as providing the best care. It develops one’s power to control a situation in any time and also manages the timeline.
The situation plays the best role, in making the professionals work by knowing the adverse effects on the patient, which helps them to handle the situation. Information, thinking and understanding are the main points to handle an adverse situation.
Decision making is related to both the points which provide the best field to the nurse which makes them clear about the condition of the patient and provides an area to the nurse to take a proper decision in proper time.
It makes them more capable than the other clinical professionals to be more effective about the decision making process as well as the working capability in a team in any kind of situation.
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