The iCARE in Interprofessional Collaboration

Overview

High-performance interprofessional teams are critical in the modern health care setting. Patients’ needs have become more complex in a mid-size inpatient and outpatient facility. Individuals are seeking care for chronic and challenging medical conditions. Therefore, patients require competent care providers who understand and collaborate during treatment. Although interprofessional teams are not always operating in the health care organization, they cooperate when the need arises to address complex medical challenges. They offer care effectively whenever they are required, but they should improve communication to enhance care delivery (Sullivan et al., 2015). Nursing action plays a vital role in the interprofessional teamwork and the application of the components of the iCARE concept. While nurses demonstrate diverse healthcare qualities, they should focus on the elements of the iCARE, including being compassionate to patients before major operations, advocating for resources for the treatment of minority patients, being resilient when caring for an injured patient, and adopting the evidence-based practice to improve care.

Nurses in Interprofessional Teams

Nurses play an essential role in interprofessional teams. Since interprofessional collaboration is the collective participation of members of different professions in the care process, nurses remain a critical part of such an organization. They work closely with patients and their families, as well as other care providers, to achieve successful treatment of diverse illnesses. Success within teams requires proper communication and collaboration to guarantee coordination of activities. Since they maintain close contact with patients, nurses synchronize activities across the interprofessional collaborative effort. For example, they communicate with patients and families and relay the information to doctors. Nurses have the most critical data about the patient, such as medical history, and a unique role and perspective on delivering quality of care to individuals and populations (Sullivan et al., 2015). Therefore, nurses play a critical role in the success of interprofessional collaboration in the health care organization.

Compassion

All nurses should be included as interprofessional collaborative partners because of their knowledge of the iCARE model and their role in quality care delivery. The first element of the model is compassion, which is a tendency to empathise with people’s pain and suffering. Nurses should always demonstrate that they understand their patients’ suffering and sympathize with them. Such quality is critical to the quality of care and patients’ well-being. Compassionate care provided by nurses improves comfort whenever one is sick or experiencing pain and suffering (West et al., 2017). As part of the interprofessional team, a nurse can comfort a patient awaiting major surgery. Compassionate care improves the organisation’s culture by creating a comfortable and caring environment for patients and other team members. Compassion also improves patient satisfaction based on the nature of care provided in the hospital. Hence, nurses provide the necessary compassion as interprofessional collaborative partners.

Advocacy

Nurses play a critical advocacy role by ensuring that patients’ needs are met adequately in their health care organizations regardless of cultural differences. Nurses ensure patients have the resources to receive quality and safe care. Although the healthcare organization operates under the tenets of equality, some patients, especially from minority populations, might face challenges because of resource limitations. Therefore, as part of the interprofessional collaboration, nurses advocate for patients’ needs to ensure they receive quality care. Besides, health practitioners should operate under the belief that every patient is entitled to effective and efficient care (Water, Ford, Spence, & Rasmussen, 2016). Such a quality affects the organisation’s culture by promoting equality in providing care to all patients regardless of diversity. It also ensures that all patients have quality care for positive outcomes, including high satisfaction. Therefore, nurses play a critical advocacy role as interprofessional collaborative partners.

Resilience

Nurses should be resilient partners in the interprofessional team. Resilience is the ability to recover after experiencing trauma or adversity. Nurses work in a very traumatic environment. Unlike other interprofessional team members, they are the first to interact with patients. For example, they provide the first point of care to patients with traumatic injuries. Therefore, they should exercise resilience when caring for such patients and avoid panicking, which can affect their ability to interact with and care for their patients. While patients’ problems might affect them, they should recover quickly to provide the required care (West et al., 2017). The imperative quality of nurses is to create a culture of comfort, regardless of the stressful nature of health care, for them and other interprofessional team members. They also support patients in the treatment and healing process because they are pillars of their strength. Hence, resilience enhances recovery for care providers while increasing quality outcomes for patients in the hospital.

Evidence-Based Practice (EBP)

As part of the interprofessional team, nurses contribute to evidence-based care. Nurses research on behalf of other interdisciplinary team members to provide evidence for the effectiveness of treatment modalities. For example, when confronted with complicated or rare diseases, they should explore the current knowledge to ascertain the information already published about the disease. Then, they share the experience with members of the team to implement or further review to find the most effective treatment for the condition. Nurses always engage in research to contribute to current knowledge about their practice (LoBiondo-Wood & Haber, 2017). Such a role helps create a culture supporting evidence-based practice in the organization. They also ensure that they provide care supported by adequate evidence of effectiveness. Such treatment modalities have higher chances of success because nurses offer quality and safe care to patients for positive outcomes. Overall, nurses are key implementers of evidence-based practice as interprofessional collaboration partners.

Summary

The iCARE components are critical parts of interprofessional collaboration because they provide qualities that support teamwork in healthcare. Nurses are an essential part of the team and exhibit the qualities in different relationships with interprofessional team members. They also play a crucial role in the achievement of quality care outcomes for patients. Compassion ensures comfort in the care process, while advocacy enables resource availability. Besides, resilience promotes the ability to provide quality care in a stressful situation, while evidence-based practice offers the necessary knowledge for decision-making in treatment and disease management. Nurses require adequate training to develop and use the four qualities because they affect their work as interprofessional partners. The knowledge about iCARE components will increase the opportunity for nurses to influence the care process and support interprofessional teams to achieve healthcare objectives. However, the most critical step, especially for the organization, is to create and use such groups in their care process. Overall, nurse leaders and other administrators should improve how they care for their patients.

 

References

LoBiondo-Wood, G., & Haber, J. (2017). Nursing research-E-book: methods and critical appraisal for evidence-based practice. New York: Elsevier Health Sciences.

Sullivan, M., Kiovsky, R. D., Mason, D. J., Hill, C. D., & Dukes, C. (2015). Interprofessional collaboration and education: working together to ensure excellence in health care. American Journal of Nursing, 115(3), 47-54.

Water, T., Ford, K., Spence, D., & Rasmussen, S. (2016). Patient advocacy by nurses–past, present and future. Contemporary Nurse, 52(6), 696-709.

West, M. M., Wantz, D., Shalongo, G., Campbell, P., Berger, K., Cole, H., … & Cellitti, K. (2017). Evaluation of compassion and resilience in nurses: From evidence-based projects to research findings. Nursing and Palliative Care, 2(4), 1-7.