That's OURS

Miss Nur is a nurse on ward Bougainvillea that morning. Then one patient ring a bell.

Miss Nur: Yes, what can I help you?

Patient: I have a headache.. I need my doctor, Dr Taufiqah.

Miss Nur read through the medical record of the patient. The patient had been hospitalized for 3 days due to Dengue Fever.

Miss Nur: Your doctor is having an urgent meeting. She used to explain me about your conditions. There's no need for her to come anyway. Here, this will help. (She passed the patient 500mg Paracetamol). You can ring a bell if your headache still persist:)

Patient: Who do think you are? You are just a nurse. How comes you let yourself giving a medication to me? I said I need my doctor! X(

***

That's somewhat typical, right? To the public, more often than not, they have a stigmatization on this. Yes, not all, but they have their own limited perspective on what's the specific list of jobs to specific profession. To us, people in health care of medical field would say that's part of the multiprofessional doings, or task shifting. Nonetheless, even some us are also not clear about it..

Multiprofessions 

Multi-professional working requires people from different professions and agencies to work together towards meeting the goals or needs. The term ‘Multi-Agency working' or ‘Integrated Working' mean different services, agencies, teams of professionals and other staff working together to provide services that meet the needs the beneficiaries.

Other terms are also used that would seem to imply similar meaning, including inter-professional, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, interagency. Barrett et al (2005) suggest the prefix ‘multi' tends to imply the involvement of personnel from different professions, disciplines or agencies, whilst the prefix ‘inter' tends to imply collaboration, particularly in areas such as decision making.

In this post, I'll try my best to bring us altogether to go deeper into this topic as it's one the very important learning especially for us, the health system members which is part of our leadership and managerial skills in order to handle health problems be it within our matters and definitely in the community. Remember, leadership and managerial skills are not only about giving out orders and health problems are not only patient's disease.

Professional learning in health system can generally be divided into two:

INTERPROFESSIONAL LEARNING	MULTIPROFESSIONAL LEARNING
2 groups: Physiotherapist/ social worker GP/ Nurse GP/ Health Service manager	3 or more professional groups: GP, nurses, physiotherapists, pharmacists
PRINCIPLES
Works to improve quality of care Involves service users and carers Promotes interprofessional collaboration	Professions learn with, from and about one another Enhance practice within the professions Respects integrity and contribution of others Increase professional satisfaction

As you can see, in general, we can conclude that the main goals of the learnings include to enhance understanding of each others professional role and responsibilities and to help develop team skills, and also to increase knowledge.

Multi Agency professionals must try to work successfully and be clear about ones role and to be aware of, and respectful of, the roles of other workers and agencies. We should actively seek and respect other people's knowledge and input to deliver the best outcomes for everyone. These behaviors should apply across the public, private and voluntary sectors.

The skills and knowledge of each individual are the source of betterment. One of the most important skills are the communication and teamwork. An effective communication between the personnel are very important to fruit a very well- done collaboration. The openness to share is also one of the main contributor for the improvement and learning. Knowledge are something goes beyond infinity. Imagine a bunch of intelligent people in one round of table:) Everyone knows or at least learn to know each others role and remit, and open to provide quires or opinions.

Well.. As I like to quote:

"EFFECTIVE HEALTH CARE DELIVERY DEPENDS ON HEALTH PROFESSIONALS WORKING TOGETHER TO ACHIEVE THE BEST POSSIBLE PATIENT OUTCOMES."

(Peter Brooks: Multiprofessional Health Education)

Next post would be about "Task Shifting", which also part of the art and science of leadership and managerial skills in order to handle health problems. Welcome to come visit here again:)

Back to INDEX 

Reference:

• "Coordinating Multiprofessions and Stakeholders", lecture by Prof. dr. Laksono Trisnantoro, M. Sc., PhD
• WHO: Framework for action on interprofessional education and collaborative practice