Importance of Multidisciplinary Teamwork in Nursing

This article discusses the importance of multidisciplinary teamwork in providing quality healthcare to patients. It explores the government strategies implemented to improve patient care and highlights the advantages and limitations of multidisciplinary teamwork in the nursing profession.

Nursing
Institutional

MULTIDISCIPLINARY TEAMWORK
Introduction.
The article emphasizes the importance of multidisciplinary teamwork in providing sufficient
and quality healthcare to the patients. It further highlights important parts that can make an
impact on multidisciplinary teamwork such as interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches.
Some of the government strategies which include clinical governance and 6 ‘C's introduced to
provide quality patient care are also addressed in this article. In addition, the author also
discusses the pros and cons of multidisciplinary teamwork.
Discussion.
Multidisciplinary teamwork is an approach which includes a collaboration of different
healthcare professionals in order to undertake the formation of a patient care plan and its
evaluation. These professionals from different clinical backgrounds exchange their knowledge to
achieve quality patient care objectives. Quality patient care is defined as care which used to
ensure patient safety and valuing the patient's opinion. According to the article, evidence-based
practice is an important part of patient quality care. It includes evidence from research, clinical
expertise, and patient priorities. The author also admits the fact that nurses and health
practitioners do not give it much importance in their clinical decision making. The article
highlights a few government policies which were introduced to proliferate the quality of patient
care. A framework known as clinical governance was implemented to undertake the
accountability process and creating a good clinical environment.
Clinical governance is maintained by doing clinical audits, a process which is used to
measure the quality of care being provided against relevant standards. If we fail to maintain these
standards, these audits should help us determine the factors causing failure so that we can set our

goals and make improvements. The other policy is the launch of 6 ‘C's which accounts for care,
competence, compassion, courage, communication, and commitment. Good communication
skills are very important in providing a quality of care as it helps in understanding the patient
needs and to exchange knowledge and information between the nurses and the other healthcare
providers taking part in caring for the patients. The courage of personal audit and hunger in
improving skills is also an important one in providing quality care. Commitment to the job is
among the factors that have a far-reaching impact on quality patient care. The article has also
discussed the advantages of multidisciplinary teamwork not forgetting its limitations too.
Teamwork for the professionals helps in the exchange of knowledge and skills which will help in
providing quality care to the patient. Teamwork enhances the capabilities to healthcare workers,
thus helping them in career mobility. During multi-disciplinary teamwork, ideas come from the
different professionals which helps in final decision making and improving the patient care.
Along with all the advantages of MDT, there are still some disadvantages of
multidisciplinary teamwork which cannot be overviewed. MDT enhances the chances of
conflicts between workers leading to a lack of communication which affects the quality of the
patient care. Another disadvantage of MDT is that the greater number of people in a working
place increases the time required for decision making.
Teamwork and leadership in the nursing profession.
This part of the assignment, the great description will be about the importance of teamwork
and leadership in the nursing profession. Teamwork is the combined action of a group, especially
when effective and efficient (Yi, 2016). In this period there are reviews of different scholarly
articles that are selected for a comparative discussion upon. The essay question being a critical
discussion on the role of the registered nurse as a member of the inter-professional healthcare

team. The descriptive discussion will be based on professionalism, teamwork, leadership and
interprofessional collaboration. In other words, the essay will critically discuss the role of the
nurse in maintaining the teamwork in the healthcare team, the nurse as a leader in the healthcare
team, the nurse as a healthcare professional in the healthcare team and finally how the nurse
collaborates with the other healthcare teammates in proving care for the patient. Interprofessional
team-based medical interventions will be discussed, the factors that play role in the nursing
profession will also be discussed, the basic requirements to be implemented in patient care, one
of them being leadership will also be discussed.
According to Baik and Zierlaer (2019), inter-professional team-based medical interventions
are highly crucial for the nursing professionals and it plays a crucial role during delivering care
to their patients. This simply means that the medical interventions to be implemented by the
nurse for patient improvement in terms of health should be developed in teamwork. Everybody
comes up with his or her idea then the best interventions are taken into consideration and
implemented then evaluation is done to check their effectivity. Qualitative research was
conducted to the nurses who have experienced nurses in the department of heart surgery.
Interviews were done to the nurses and interventions were observed in the entire research period.
One of the interventions is that according to Sherwood, & Zomorodi (2014), inter-professional
team building creates safety in the working environment along with a great culture change. It
also enhances the efficiency of nurses during delivering care to the patients. It was observed by
the researchers that, maintenances of the inter-professional team-related activities help in the
enhancement of job satisfaction for the nursing professionals as well as enhancing the quality of
the care given to the patients. It was found that Good leadership of the senior nursing officials in
a health care facility, as well as maintenance of teamwork, helps the nursing professionals

improvising their workflow. According to Weller, Boyd & Cumin, (2014), it also found that
effective teamwork and efficient leadership in the nursing profession also helps in the
establishment of effective communication. When the healthcare team is collaborative and are
united it aids in communication flow from the physician to the different nursing professionals
down to the patient with minimal; distortion or misinterpretations of the information given out to
help in caring for the patient. When there is no teamwork between the healthcare team the
information from one healthcare team member to the other can be distorted or modified along the
way thus ending up misleading that can result into poor quality healthcare delivery.
There are different kinds of factors which play a key role in the nursing teamwork and
deliverance of quality care to the patient. In this research paper, it was observed that inefficient
medical organizations effective teamwork among the nursing professionals is highly crucial and
it has a pivotal role in providing care and safety towards their patients. Another research was
conducted in the Australian Acute care tertiary hospitals. More than 501 surveys were done to
come up with qualitative and quantitative data. And when the analysis from the research was
done it was found that the nursing professionals improve their services and activities when
support is provided to them (Atefi et al., 2014). It was also found that Inspiring them to work
together through an effective team building procedure improves their services as well. nurses
tend to appreciate when their work is recognized by the nursing leadership officials in the
healthcare organization by either praising them for the good work they are doing or awarding
them with different awards. For example, if a team of healthcare providers performs a procedure
that comes out effective without any complications of asepsis then that team should be applauded
for the great work done. His will increase their zeal and morale in their work and by doing so
there will be a positive competition among the healthcare professionals which will end up

increasing the quality of the services offered in that healthcare facility. Training among nursing
professionals was also discussed by the authors. A great difference was observed in the
psychological department where nurses were trained with compatible mental model
implementation. Training increases the nursing professionals' skills. After someone is trained,
he/she becomes more intelligent and gets different ways of handling multiple things happening at
ago. We are aware that the emergency department requires a well-trained healthcare provider
who is quick to respond and is ready to expect the unexpected at any time of the day. Therefore,
training improves the healthcare services offered by trained nurses.
Effective teamwork was also found to have a great improvement in communication through
the establishment of the verbal and non-verbal communication system. Teamwork makes a bond
between the workmates which can lead to good communication network among themselves
(Katz, Lazarsfeld, & Roper, 2017). In teamwork, there will always be immediate feedback thus
making communication between them effective. In teamwork, there is always an assurance that
one will help in case things don't go as per expectation. This belief, assurance and effective
communication help in improving the quality of the healthcare services. Finally, it was
concluded that communication building and effective leadership related activities are highly
recommended for all nursing professionals. The nursing professionals are therefore
recommended to improvise their personal skills through the identification of their weak points.
Checking on their weak points and responding effectively plus the effective communication,
training and effective teamwork will result in an improvement of the nursing healthcare services
provided to the patients.
According to Gilday et.al., (2018), there are three basic requirements which need to be
implemented in the quality patient caring system. These requirements include the establishment

of a nursing community where leadership is a prime thing, organizations along with the quality
of care to deliver patient safety mainly in their children care related pediatric services. In this
research, it is emphasized that the nursing community-based cares including their attitudes
towards their patients, the impact of their leadership and teamwork upon the quality of care given
towards the patients. It is observed that along with teamwork and leadership, proper systematic
approach of them, medical organizations are highly needed which are mostly creating barriers in
the way of implementation of quality care towards the patients. Jokobsen et al (2018), has opined
that high quality oriented medical caring needs an undergraduate level simulation course for the
nursing students. On this research purpose, 310 students and 16 facilitators participated with
their view that after going through the entire course, they will be in a position of providing
effective leadership to their patients. It will be a helpful course to provide effective leadership
by making nursing communications. It is observed that after completion of these courses, there
will be a great improvement in the emotional activities of nursing students through the
completion of the learning outcomes. It is also observed after some years that such nursing
students will be in apposition of leading their team and delivering medical care to the healthcare
organizations in the world effectively.
Morse and Wong, (2019), propounded that, to maintain patient safety and its culture paper
leadership is highly important. In this aspect, researchers have emphasized the structure-based
empowerment and four crucial dimensions of a leader and a member-based exchange theory. In
this theory, there is a great emphasis over the contribution, affect, loyal relationship
maintenances and professional; respects of nursing professionals. Through making the emphasis
over the leadership in the nursing communities, authors have provided an analytical framework
to the medical organizations regarding their caregiving activities to their patients. Loyal

relationship with the team members will help them in effective learning as well as
communicating with the patients to share their all kinds of feelings and woos.
Conclusion.
In conclusion, the entire descriptive essay discussion was about multidisciplinary teamwork
in the nursing profession and how when it is supported by other factors leads to improvement in
the quality of the services offered by the professional nurses. It is concluded that
multidisciplinary teamwork is instrumental in providing quality patient care. It has been
observed that implementation of all the suggested factors enables nursing professionals to
communicate in an effective manner. Some limitations or barriers were also identified where it is
recommended of their removal to remain with the positive sides of teamwork since the
advantages override the disadvantages. Pieces of training and theories are also discussed in this
essay. They provide a new dimension to the nursing communities to materialize effective patient
services along with quality. It is therefore evident that teamwork should be part of the nursing
professionals for quality healthcare delivery of services.

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