Collaborative Nursing Care Concepts and Principles

Introduction

Working in a team requires special kinds of knowledge and skills from a professional. What concerns nurse workers, their collaboration is specifically important as their combined efforts and empathetic communication with clients lead to enhancing people’s health state. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the constituent parts of effective cooperation between nursing staff and patients.

Main Principles of Collaborative Teamwork

Two of the core principles of nursing practice are socialization and resocialization. Socialization is connected with one’s preparation for a specific societal role. Resocialization takes place when a person adjusts his/her role in the new environment (Hood, 2014). Professional nurses face many occurrences of these principles since their academic and professional attempts require a lot of changes.

Dealing with clients requires nurses’ empathetic and respectful treatment and responsive attitude (Hood, 2014). In the case when care accountability is equally divided between nurses and patients, they commence a collaborative relationship (Hood, 2014). This type of connection encourages patients desire to share personal data which may enhance the treatment process. Further, such information is used by a nurse to register the core issues and decide on a care plan (Hood, 2014). Together, client and nurse assess the efficiency of the plan and come up with the ways of implementing it when it is beneficial or think of another one if the initial plan is poor.

Communication principles promoting fruitful collaboration include respect, presence, empathy, and genuineness (Hood, 2014, p. 85). Respect presupposes displaying proper regard for others’ feelings. Presence involves spending time with each other even if people may not communicate verbally. Empathy is the talent of comprehending other people’s feelings. Genuineness is the sincerity employed by people during communication with others (Hood, 2014, pp. 85-87). Owning the described communication principles helps people to win the trust of others. It is of particular importance in nurse-patient relationships.

Central Concepts of Contemporary Nursing Care

Present-day nursing care involves seven core concepts connected under an acronym FLOWERS™ (Sprayberry, 2014). These concepts are fundamentals of care, leadership at the bedside, ownership of outcomes, wisdom, ethics, relational competence, and skilled caring (Sprayberry, 2014, p. 123). Each of the notions is considered vital for successful nursing care and collaboration. Fundamentals of care are everyday activities done by each person regarding personal hygiene and care. Leadership at the bedside presupposes patient support and integrated care with the help of teamwork (Sprayberry, 2014). Ownership of outcomes is concerned with nurses’ responsibility for decisions which influence the length of patients’ admission along with cost and results of treatment. Wisdom is a complex quality which pertains to experienced and highly-skilled nurses (Sprayberry, 2014). The concept of ethics is of great significance as it may promote relationships based on trust. Under such circumstances, patients are more willing to share with nurses, which leads to better care organization. Relational competence is responsible for the best customer-oriented outcomes (Sprayberry, 2014). Finally, the concept of skilled caring is the pinnacle of nursing science.

The seven concepts described by Sprayberry manifest the most crucial aspects of successful nursing care and teamwork collaboration. Mastery of these issues empowers nurses to reach the best outcomes for their patients and find the ways of cooperation among the medical workers.

Conclusion

Nursing care is a crucial aspect of medical treatment as it presupposes communication between nurses and patients to find the best solutions and methods. Collaborative teamwork is realized via socialization and resocialization. Communication principles are employed to assist cooperation between patients and nurses. Seven fundamental concepts of nursing care are differentiated. These concepts and principles should be used to gain the most efficient nursing care results.

References

Hood, L. J. (2014). Conceptual basis of professional nursing (8th ed.). Baltimore, MD: Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.

Sprayberry, L. D. (2014). A response to the transformation of America’s health care: direct-care nurses bring FLOWERS™ to the bedside. MEDSURG Nursing, 23(2), 123-130.