The program’s primary concentration is on adult nursing services. Winterbourne View was selected as the subject of the case study. Winterbourne Private Hospital was owned and run by Castlebeck Care Limited, a subsidiary of Castlebeck Care Limited. Individuals with learning difficulties and autism spectrum disorders with behavioral or mental health concerns were admitted to the institution. By studying this case study, adult nursing students may benefit from learning about the negative impacts of interprofessional collaboration on adult hospital patients. It has been shown that a lack of good interprofessional and interagency cooperation in health care and adult nursing has negative consequences. In the chosen case study framework, inter-professional and inter-agency collaboration analysis is presented and discussed in detail (Rawlinson et al., 2021).
Cooperative interprofessional and interagency principles and practices
Improvements in health and social care can only be realized via collaborative efforts across several disciplines. Cooperative efforts between two or more groups to accomplish a shared objective are inter-professional (IPW) or inter-agency (IAW) collaboration. The concept of IPW is based on the importance of communication. Creating cross-functional teams made of experts from various professions is required to implement this concept. Interprofessional team members must actively exchange and seek information from one another to ensure that their roles and duties are correctly understood. This criterion was not adhered to in the case study under consideration. The medical team at Winterbourne View Hospital could not interact appropriately. An example of a communication failure occurred when the hospital failed to inform the patient’s family, the National Health Service (NHS), and the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
Another IPW concept is that of collaboration. People from various professions must work together to properly coordinate and care for the community’s residents and visitors. Interprofessional teams can only operate successfully if members are willing to set aside their egos and work together to accomplish a shared objective. Teamwork facilitates the selection of relevant activities by bringing team members together in one place. According to Winterbourne View, it was not noticed that this idea existed. The hospital’s primary areas of specialization were in the fields of learning disability nursing and psychiatry.
On the other hand, individuals from both fields are unable to collaborate. Patients were taken advantage of as a result of this insufficient collaboration. In addition to interprofessional ethics, this issue is a driving force for IPW. In interprofessional ethics, the emphasis should be on the patients and their families, and the code should be written in a single language that all specialists in the field can understand. The case study at Winterbourne View did not reveal any instances of interprofessional ethics. Employees at the hospital chose to ridicule and humiliate their patients instead of assisting them due to this decision. Winterbourne View Hospital’s healthcare ethics were weak in terms of justice, autonomy, and beneficence, among other things. Interprofessional coordination helps to keep patients safe from being harmed by others. For example, several hospitals and hospital-affiliated organizations failed to recognize critical warning indicators. Among the factors that led to the abuse was the presence of police officers in and around the hospital, the reporting of safeguarding concerns to the local council, administrative incompetence, and a punishing culture. A large number of organizations were unable to meet their statutory obligations. The National Health Service (NHS) or the Care Quality Commission (CQC) did not ensure patient safety. Neither body could check that hospital executives and workers were following rules. It was impossible to prevent the abuse since the local council, the board for protecting adults, and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) did not operate together as a team (Rawlinson et al., 2021).
Key Principles
One of the most significant hurdles to IPW in this case study is a lack of communication. Inadequate or non-existent communication among IPW members is a challenge that makes it difficult to collaborate successfully. We could not communicate timely information since there were no effective means to share information and obtain agreement on job descriptions because there was no efficient way to do so. According to the findings of our case study, no regular meetings were conducted to assess whether or not the hospital’s personnel and administrators were carrying out their responsibilities appropriately. Inadequate communication between the hospital administration and critical stakeholders, such as the NHS and the CQC, resulted in the administration failing to report instances of abuse to these institutions. If someone was injured, the management informed no one of it. A lack of cooperation among the prescribers at the doctor’s office also contributed to the difficulties encountered with medicine administration. Because of a lack of training for healthcare staff, IPW is difficult to achieve in this context. According to research, collaboration is inhibited by a lack of knowledge or awareness of the collaborative and interprofessional practice. A lack of training contributed to their inability to interact effectively with other health and social care professionals and to effectively carry out their obligations on the job. Because of a lack of education and experience in both professions, medical practitioners specializing in learning disorders could not communicate effectively in their sector. They could not collaborate to provide safe and effective treatment to hospital patients.
Furthermore, the staff neglected to report the abuses, which insulted injury. Nonetheless, even though some staff members were not complicit in the patient abuse, they did nothing to stop it. Abuse may be avoided if healthcare staff is adequately trained and work together to provide safe and patient-centered care to their patients and their families (Montano et al., 2021).
Collaborate Across a Range of Disciplines
To ensure the success of interprofessional meetings and the processing of patient data, it is essential to have established protocols in place prior to the meetings. It has been shown in research that standardizing patient data collection and processing, as well as information transfer, helps to increase interprofessional cooperation. The institution lacked policies and processes for arranging and documenting interprofessional meetings and were not followed. One example of this is the hospital’s incapacity to track the injuries patients sustained while they were under the organization’s care. The absence of meetings resulted in a number of lost chances for corrective action to be taken. If, for example, regular meetings had been conducted to evaluate the quality of care provided at the hospital, the practice would have been detected and ended. Because there were not enough processes in place, Castlebeck Ltd.’s management chose not to challenge the hospital’s unethical activity. Having departmental and organizational leaders that support or serve as agents of interprofessional cooperation is another factor that contributes to the success of IPW initiatives. Leaders must address significant issues, concerns, and criticisms to foster interprofessional collaboration. A strong leader would utilize observations and experiences from staff members while doing their daily care duties to create multidisciplinary meetings that would enable modifications to be made. According to records, Winterbourne View Hospital hasn’t had qualified management in at least six months. In addition, allegations of patient maltreatment were disregarded by the administration. By dismissing whistleblowers’ allegations and patients’ allegations, management permitted a culture of abuse to thrive. Failing to provide adequate care threatened patients’ safety, which might have been avoided had correct protocols been followed. The effectiveness of management would have resulted in better patient outcomes if interprofessional collaboration had been more prevalent (El-Awaisi et al., 2021).
Recommendations Based on the Results of the Research
It is stated that improving IPW in adult nursing should entail choosing leaders who possess the necessary abilities and competence and educating nurses and other professionals who operate in the area of senior healthcare services. Nurse leaders in adult nursing units with the appropriate knowledge and abilities to promote IPW should be assigned to their respective units. Among them are good communication and the capacity to settle the conflict, collaboration and coordination, and the ability to provide equitable opportunities for participation in decision-making to all members of multidisciplinary teams, among other things. In professional contexts, strong and consistent leadership and a leader’s capacity to help others result in a greater awareness of commonalities and the development of new collaborative techniques. The chosen leader should be well-versed in the many duties and tasks that are assigned to the various healthcare professions and organizations. It is possible for leaders who have a good grasp of IPW to solve IPW challenges, such as role conflicts, cultural and behavioral disparities, and so on. Training nursing staff and other healthcare workers on the unit is one way healthcare organizations may improve IPW in elder care facilities. This recommendation is warranted because interprofessional learning aids professionals in better understanding the roles and responsibilities of their colleagues, as previously stated. Adult nurses may better understand the duties and responsibilities of doctors, dieticians, psychotherapists, and pharmacists, as well as ways to cooperate with them in the delivery of adult care. For example, the training will refine IPW abilities (Busca et al., 2021).
Conclusion
The program’s primary concentration is on adult nursing services. Winterbourne View Hospital was selected as the subject of the case study. Individuals with learning difficulties and autism spectrum disorders with behavioral or mental health concerns were admitted to the institution. In this situation, patients in adult hospitals had disastrous results because of a failure of interprofessional and interagency coordination. Communication, collaboration, and ethics are critical in this circumstance, and all three IPW concepts are essential. According to the case studies, these recommendations were not followed, which resulted in patient exploitation and other problems. The inability to communicate effectively and poor personnel training are the two most significant obstacles to IPW’s success. Many elements contribute to IPW, including procedures for interprofessional meetings, documentation, and data processing, as well as leaders with strong interprofessional cooperation skills, as shown by the case study’s leaders with strong interprofessional cooperation skills. The leadership of adult nurses and other health care professionals in adult care settings should be provided by those who have the experience and abilities to improve IPW, as well as training in how to do so.
References
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El-Awaisi, A., Awaisu, A., Aboelbaha, S., Abedini, Z., Johnson, J., & Al-Abdulla, S. A. (2021). Perspectives of Healthcare Professionals Toward Interprofessional Collaboration in Primary Care Settings in a Middle Eastern Country. Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare, Volume 14, 363–379. https://doi.org/10.2147/jmdh.s286960
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Montano, A., Cornell, P. Y., & Gravenstein, S. (2021). Barriers and facilitators to interprofessional collaborative practice for community‐dwelling older adults: An integrative review. Journal of Clinical Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.15991
Rawlinson, C., Carron, T., Cohidon, C., Arditi, C., Hong, Q. N., Pluye, P., Peytremann-Bridevaux, I., & Gilles, I. (2021). An Overview of Reviews on Interprofessional Collaboration in Primary Care: Barriers and Facilitators. International Journal of Integrated Care, 21(2), 32. https://doi.org/10.5334/ijic.5589