RESPONSE DISCUSSION

The American Nurses Association (ANA) defines interprofessional collaboration as a shared effort of a multitude of professional healthcare providers networking and communicating amongst patients, families, coworkers, colleagues, and communities to provide holistic care (Moss, Seifert & O'Sullivan, 2016). It is the shared involvement and teamwork that allows a patient-centered approach to treat the whole person rather than a condition or disease process. The ANA outline specific barriers that limit the Registered Nurse's role in the interprofessional collaboration and suggest recommendations to help eliminate these barriers (Moss, Seifert & O'Sullivan, 2016). The lack of nurse-designed collaborations is one example with a proposal for nursing programs to develop and test interprofessional practice collaboration models within their curriculums (Moss, Seifert & O'Sullivan, 2016).

According to Chappell, Regneir, and Travlos (2018), the most prominent health care professions of medicine, nursing, and pharmacy should play an active role to demand participation in programs focusing on interprofessional collaboration education. They indicate that regulating bodies, professional membership organizations and employers should implement interprofessional collaboration education into their annual educational courses (Chappell, Regneir & Travlos, 2018). Combined efforts of the academic institutions, employers, regulating bodies and professional organizations could help make interprofessional collaboration part of the natural process of caring for our patients. However, the concept of interprofessional collaboration is not a new one, as the Institute of Medicine (IOM) garnered the concept to decrease medical errors to improve the quality of healthcare (Selleck, Fifolt, Burkart, Frank, Curry & Hites, 2017).

It is difficult to ascertain why the nurse practitioner (NP) in this study made the changes to the patient's plan of care due to a lack of information. If the patient was experiencing significant adverse effects to one of the medications, then making changes to that specific medication would be prudent. However, I would not make several changes to the plan of care without collaborating with the primary care provider. If the issue is due to one of the patient's MS medications, I would recommend the patient see that provider. If the patient is unable to see the provider promptly, then I would consult with that provider.

References

Chappell, K., Regnier, K., & Travlos, D. V. (2018). Leading by example: The role of accreditors in promoting interprofessional collaborative practice. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 32(4), 404–406. doi: 10.1080/13561820.2018.1433276

Moss, E., Seifert, P. C., & O'Sullivan, A. (2016). Registered Nurses as interprofessional collaborative partners: Creating value-based outcomes. The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 21(3). doi: DOI: 10.3912/OJIN.Vol21No03Man04

Selleck, C. S., Fifolt, M., Burkart, H., Frank, J. S., Curry, W. A., & Hites, L. S. (2017). Providing primary care using an interprofessional collaborative practice model: What clinicians have learned. Journal of Professional Nursing, 33(6), 410–416. doi: 10.1016/j.profnurs.2016.11.004