Interprofessional working in UK health and social care
Introduction
The aim of any healthcare is to deliver the best care services that aligns with the patients needs. For this to happen interprofessional collaboration is essential. Healthcare professionals from various department and levels of care must work together to achieve a common goal of enhanced care services. Different healthcare departments applies varying strategies to strengthen interprofessional working. As the health and social care becomes a critical concern in many countries, new strategies of interprofessional working enhancement are popping up. Intermediate care is among the recent strategies within current UK health and social care. This approach seeks to bridge the gap between intensive and primary care and enable people live independent lives. In this paper, the focus is on the application of this strategy in strengthening the interprofessional collaboration through assessing the contribution of various healthcare professionals, key drivers, evidence, legislations, and effectiveness in enhancing team working.
Challenge and contributions of professions towards the redesign of services for patient care
Recently, the desire of redesigning the patient care in the UK have been on the rise in an effort to make health and social care services better through the introduction of the intermediate care strategy. This strategy requires involvement and contribution of different healthcare professionals such as nurses, doctors, and allied healthcare with each playing a critical role in this transformation. Every healthcare professional brings different perspective and expertise that are essential in shaping and redesigning intermediate care. Here are some of their contributions and challenges they are facing in the process:
Nurses
Nurses are at the front line in the patient care and have a significant contribution in the redesigning of the healthcare services. They are at the heart of the implementation of the intermediate care strategy. Nurses provide specialized care to patients through nurse-led and patient-centered approaches that seek to enhance the healthcare services and improve patient experience (Pianori et al., 2021). These nurses specialize in delivering specialized care to patients with complex medical issues and chronic conditions through enhancing their safety, administering medication, and offering any other intervention. Also, they facilitate communication between the patients, healthcare providers, and family to ensure shared patient care among all involved parties (Danielsen et al., 2018). In addition, the nurses must ensure enhanced collaboration between team members and other parties to ensure proper administration of medication and provision of adequate patient care. They must also arrange and plan support after the discharge of the patient from the healthcare facility. Nurses have been in forefront of developing new methods and tools for improving patient support and care. In this essence, they have a critical contributing in ensuring and safe delivery of intermediate care.
However, nurses have been facing significant challenges in the redesign of health care services. The first challenge is staff shortage in the intermediate care facilities which means that nurses have to work for long hours which result in burnout and decreased job satisfaction (Kieft et al., 2014). The shortage also impacts the implementation of patient-centered and nurse-led care denying patients the needed support in their recovery and rehabilitation journey. In addition, the lack of support and collaboration from other healthcare providers is limiting the contribution of nurses in bettering patient care services particularly with the increasing aged population with chronic conditions (Jamshidi et al., 2016). The rising number is making it a challenge for intermediate care facilities to offer better services and care to patients. Lastly, many facilities are focusing on cutting costs and efficiency which is impacting the ability of the nurses to deliver quality care to the patients. All these challenges are hindering the contribution of nurses in the redesigning of intermediate care.