Nurse Collaboration

Question #1 (Required)

Collaboration amongst healthcare team members and patients is an integral competency for the advanced practice registered nurse (APRN). Collaboration entails the authentic interaction between two or more people to learn and solve problems together.1 The APRN’s skills and experience, in collaboration with the physician, delivers a higher quality care, which increases patient satisfaction and decreases healthcare costs.1 Also, collaboration can offer the following benefits for APRN’s and physicians: improved trust and respect, sharing of responsibility and expertise, enhanced personal satisfaction and improved communication. Being an APRN in primary care, I not only have to collaborate with my supervising physician and

I have to be proficient in my specialty of geriatrics due to providers and patients depending on my knowledge to perform my role as the APRN. Having expert clinical knowledge inspires collaborating physicians to trust my practice and also respect the skills and expertise I bring to the team. Sometimes, physicians may provide resistance and perceive themselves as knowing everything. This can be combated by utilizing evidence based practice to inform physicians and speak their “language,” and to bring my nursing knowledge to convey how to educate patients on their lifestyle choices and illness. While sharing my expertise in patient education, I can also learn from physicians in their skills of diagnosing. Bringing forth my contribution while listening to the physician’s perspective will allow mutual trust and respect to foster within our collaboration, illustrating that no one profession can serve as a substitution for the other, and that we must work as a team to provide the highest quality of patient care. Becoming a new graduate NP, I will need to find a work environment that supports my “novicehood” so that I can learn and mature clinically. At the same time, I will hold myself responsible for my own clinical competence by joining professional organizations geared toward geriatrics and subscribing to journals, all to engage in a lifelong journey of education. Also, trust can be enhanced by being

Since the indoctrination of the physician role, there continues to be an “us versus them” mentality. We have too many silos in healthcare, as each profession whether it be a physician or NP, is their own culture with its own values, knowledge, rules and norms.1 Physicians have a heavy biomedical model approach to the patient, focusing solely on disease, versus the NP with the complementary holistic approach. Understanding and respecting each other’s roles and what we can each bring to care for the patient can only benefit and lead to collaboration. Also, deeply entrenched sociocultural values can hinder collaboration, like the silos, some physicians have a turf war mentality. Some do not want NP’s crossing over into their interventions, and the reality is that we have the education and training to assess and manage patients very much like a physician. I need to educate those unfamiliar with the NP role and to delineate that we are here to serve as a collaboration and not a substitution to the physician. Also, as with any workplace differing communication styles can undermine collaboration such as being difficult, bullying and abusive. As the NP, I need to identify colleagues that are exhibiting disruptive behavior (rude, harassing, coercive) and bring it to their attention so that it may be fixed.