Nursing Leadership: Registered Nurse Roles and Interprofessional Teams

This essay delves into the multifaceted roles of registered nurses within interdisciplinary healthcare teams. It highlights the registered nurse's responsibilities as a primary caregiver, educator, and patient advocate, emphasizing the importance of critical thinking, therapeutic communication, and patient autonomy. The paper explores concepts of interprofessional teams, professionalism, leadership, and teamwork, with a focus on the benefits of collaboration in enhancing patient outcomes and reducing medical errors. It emphasizes the significance of effective communication, respect, and trust among healthcare professionals, alongside the need for continuous adaptation to advancements in technology and the evolving healthcare landscape. The essay concludes by reinforcing the importance of registered nurses adhering to their core responsibilities while working within a multidisciplinary team to ensure optimal patient care.

Running head: NURSING LEADERHSIP 1
Nursing leadership
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Introduction
Often, registered nurses offer diverse services to healthcare consumers in different
settings. There are some things that nurses carry out on a daily basis that are unique. On the
contrary, there are some things that nurses can’t do but they can be done by other experts. The
fact that the nursing profession is broad in nature forces nurses to assume multiple roles while
meeting the healthcare needs of patients (Wilson et al., 2019). For that matter, this paper will
explore the different roles of a registered nurse in an interdisciplinary team. Furthermore,
concepts of inter professional team, professionalism, leadership, and teamwork and Inter-
professional collaboration will be explored. Finally, there will be a conclusion that will highlight
important details explained in the essay.
Role of registered nurse
A registered nurse is the primary caregiver. It is the duty of the registered nurse to
implement nursing intervention so as to meet both the physical, psychosocial spiritual and
environmental needs of the both the patients and their family members. In so doing, the nurse is
supposed to incorporate different nursing standards set by the Australian Nursing and mid wifery
board. In standard one, the nurse is supposed to think critically and analyze nursing practice
(Crouch, Fillmore, Fly, & Ukot, 2015). In this standard, the nurse while providing care should
think of the best strategies and available evidence before making any decisions.
A registered nurse is a nurse educator. According to the Australian Nursing and
Midwifery Board, a nurse is supposed to educate patients, their families, communities and other
healthcare team members. It is the duty of the nurse to provide relevant information about
diseases, medications and rehabilitation needs (Verhaegh et al., 2017). In so doing, the nurse

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should act according to standard two that dictates nurse to engage in therapeutic and professional
relationships. This standard warrants nurses to effectively communicate with consumers of
healthcare.
A registered nurse is a patient’s advocate. A registered nurse should respect the decisions
made by patients and bolster patient autonomy. Patient advocacy also revolves around standard
two that focus on therapeutic relationships between the nurse and the patient. The aim of this role
is to secure self-determination, protections of patients’ rights (Drennan, Gabe, Halter, De
Lusignan, & Levenson, 2017). In this role, the nurse also acts as the bridge between the patient
and other healthcare providers since it is the nurse who interacts with patients on a daily basis.
Furthermore, the registered nurse represents the interests of patients who has unmet needs.
Finally, the registered nurse speaks for the patients interests as if they are the nurses.
Inter-professional team
Nurses have in the past years worked within teams. In most hospitals, the nurses are
considered ‘permanent’ staff due to their routine interaction with patients. Other healthcare
providers such as social workers are only available for few hours. In a study conducted by
Raffery, teamwork among workers improve staff retention and reduces job stress and burnout
(Stievano et al., 2016). The same study found out that there are different barriers in establishing
positive interprofessional teamwork. One of the highlighted issue is a poor physician/nurse
relationship. Huinen in 2013 found out that the poor relationship between nurses and physicians
causes some of the nurses to leave the profession.

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Professionalism
Often, registered nurses work under demanding or strenuous environment. This can be
very hard to cope up. Despite the challenge, registered nurses have to put the patient’s interests
ahead and upholding ethics then bring the correct attitude to the job on a daily basis. This is what
defines professionalism among registered nurses (Drennan, Gabe, Halter, De Lusignan, &
Levenson, 2017). In order to exercise professionalism, there are certain aspects that a registered
nurse is supposed to incorporate into practice. This includes taking time to listen to patients.
Professionalism among nurses is important since it improves patient safety and optimizes on the
health outcomes.
Leadership
The nursing profession is quite dynamic. Good leadership is therefore vital for better
outcomes. Good nurse leaders should have certain leadership skills or attributes to steer their
colleagues in the right direction. The nurse leader should have emotional intelligence. In clinical
settings, the nurse leader should work closely with trainees to assist them develop emotional
intelligence. Surveys indicate that nurses struggle with stress and burn out and emotional
intelligence can assist them overcome such. The nurse profession is very complex in nature. As a
result, all nurses should have critical thinking skills so that they can maneuver around the
different complexities and make good decisions. Critical thinking is among the set nursing and
midwifery standards (Farrell, Payne, & Heye, 2015). Communication skills are also important.
This is because nurses work in a multidisciplinary team. They are therefore required to have
good communication skills so that they can work in harmony within the team. Furthermore,
nurses act as a bridge between the patient and other physicians. Nurses also interact with
patients, family members and other carers and are supposed to maintain therapeutic relationship

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as stipulated in standard two of the nursing and midwifery standards. However, it is only
possible to maintain therapeutic relationship through effective communication. Furthermore,
professional socialization and respect also plays a key role (Smolowitz et al., 2015). A good
nurse leader should be in a good position to comprehend patient nurse dynamics. Furthermore,
the nurse should respect the patients and other staff members. Respect to the patients desires and
needs is promoting autonomy of the patient which is an important component of nursing.
Teamwork
Teamwork is key in providing care to patients. In healthcare, teamwork is defined as
interdependent interaction people two or more people with a common objective. According to
the World Health Organization, healthcare is a multidisciplinary profession where doctors,
nurses and other experts from different fields work together, communicate often and share
different resources (Scherer, Myers, O'Connor, & Haskins, 2013). Health teams comprise of
cadres each with unique knowledge and responsible for unique tasks or responsibilities. The aim
of the health teams is to solve the patient’s problems or issues.
According to recent surveys, there are different reasons that necessitate teamwork in
healthcare. First, clinical care is increasingly becoming complex. Healthcare experts should
therefore adapt to these changes as quickly as possible. Furthermore, aging populations that
increase the risk of chronic conditions like diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease
necessitate the need for a multidisciplinary approach (Grover, Porter, & Morphet, 2017). In the
United States of America for example, it is recommended that medical teams should look after
patients suffering from multiple medical conditions. In Brazil, healthcare teams are trained on
how to intimately comprehend the needs of the patients. Research has also found out that
teamwork reduce medical errors and improves patient safety. Since most of the medical errors

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are due to burnout among nurses and other healthcare experts, teamwork is one of the factors that
eliminate burnout among the medical staff and subsequently lower the risk of medical errors.
Teamwork contributes to satisfaction among both patients and nurses. In a study
conducted recently, results indicate that nurses who successfully go through team building
efforts are more satisfied with their job as compared to those who do not (Hustoft et al., 2018).
Furthermore, patients and their families also feel more at ease with teamwork since it is cent red
around solid communication. Since teamwork has many benefits, the culture of teamwork should
be instilled during training. In fact, the WHO recommend students to begin incorporating
teamwork in their education.
Inter-professional collaboration.
Collaboration is the pillar of success in any team. According to recent studies, one of the
trademarks of successful healthcare innovations lies in inter professional collaboration. When
nurses collaborate with other healthcare providers, there is improved patient outcomes (McKay
& Vanaskie, 2018). More often, we have heard the phrase, “two heads are better than a single
head.” What this phrase basically means is that two or more people working together yields
better outcomes as opposed to a single individual working alone (Regan, Laschinger, & Wong,
2015). Inter professional communication is therefore important since it brings together individual
and collective skills and the experience of different team members to work together. This will in
return lead to delivery of high level services as opposed to when an individual works alone.
At different healthcare organizations like hospitals, it is the nurse who interacts with
patients mostly. They are therefore well positioned to explain or comprehend what is of benefit
or harmful to the patient. Interprofessional team allows the nurse to share such information with

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other healthcare workers so that they come up with a good plan that works well with the patient.
According to D’Amor, there are five key concepts that define collaboration. They include
sharing, partnership, and power, interdependency and finally process (Nash et al., 2018). Sharing
in this study implies collective action with a common objective. In this case, the goal is to
improve quality of healthcare and safety of the patient. Partnership on the other hand implies
honesty, communication, trust, respect and pursuing common objectives between healthcare
professionals mostly between nurses and other physicians (Phillips, Esterman, & Kenny, 2015).
Interprofessional collaboration not only improves the quality of care but also reduces the cost of
healthcare. Nurses and other physicians should therefore strive to trust, respect and work
together for a common objective.
Conclusion
In the past years, the healthcare sector has undergone rapid revolution due to
advancements in technology. The revolution has come at a cost since nurses have to adapt to
these changes. Despite the changes, registered nurses should stick to their core role of delivering
safe care to the patients. This is only possible with the support of a multidisciplinary team that
has the same objective of ensuring good standards or optimal patient care. Nurses should strive
to ensure that whatever they do when advancing their role, complements the current role. Nurses
should be vigilant against litigation and consider whatever they really want to achieve since each
registered nurse is accountable for their actions.

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