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Teamwork in MDT as a Leadership Element for Safe and Efficient Patient Care

10 Jul 2024,12:52 PM

Teamwork in MDT as a Leadership Element for Safe and Efficient Patient Care

Teamwork in MDT as a Leadership Element for Safe and Efficient Patient Care

In the journey of the nursing profession, newly qualified nurses (NQNs) are expected to increase their responsibility and clinical skill adaptations.  A considerable part of an NQN’s leadership’s drive for safe and efficient patient care is teamwork; within a multidisciplinary team (MDT). Teamwork is a critical tool for creating safe and effective healthcare outcomes making it easier to provide the right data on the best processes after a thorough comparison. According to Soukup et al. (2018), MDT-driven care utilises various teams, environments, individuals, and patient inputs - alongside processes like tests, interactions, and results like patient experience - when aspiring to attain effective patient care. This MDT-based teamwork is especially vital in contemporary society due to the increasing complexities of care specialisation that has rendered the sole delivery of quality care that fulfils patient outcomes a thing of the past. As such, a parallel healthcare professional development with a focus on teamwork approach focusing on the patient is required by the current healthcare evolution and worldwide demand for quality healthcare for patients that is only possible with the placement of the patient at the centre of care and sharing a diverse culture of principles and values that helps create an effective team with the capability of delivering efficient and safe healthcare to the patients. This assignment will critically discuss the connection between teamwork in MDT as a leadership element and safe, effective patient care to spearhead Newly Qualified Nurses (NQN) in attaining effective patient care.

Teamwork in MDT as a Leadership Element for Safe and Efficient Patient Care; Background/context

Contemporary healthcare is marked by increasing complexities of care specialisation that have rendered the sole delivery of quality care that fulfils patient outcomes a thing of the past. As such, there is a need to approach healthcare delivery collaboratively, where healthcare professionals from diverse specialties work together to address the varied needs of patients effectively. As such, Multidisciplinary teamwork (MDT), involving the integration of professionals from various disciplines, including doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, social workers, and other allied health professionals, comes in handy to promote collaboration in the development and implementation of comprehensive care plans for an assessment of all aspects of a patient's condition (medical, surgical, social, and psychological). As a collaborative care model, teamwork in MDT leverages each team member’s expertise for patient health outcome enhancement, improving patient satisfaction and reducing hospital readmission.  (NHS, 2017; Chandrashekar & Mohan, 2019). As such, effective and safe patient outcomes are possible with the crucial role of leadership through teamwork in MDT, which promotes a conducive environment for effective teamwork, sets a clear vision, promotes a collaborative culture, and ensures alignment of team efforts with safe and efficient patient care delivery. Effective leadership within MDTs also involves addressing barriers to teamwork, such as communication breakdowns, role ambiguity, and interpersonal conflicts.

Teamwork in MDT as a Leadership Element for Safe and Efficient Patient Care; First section

Clinical leadership is having responsibility over those sharing a common route or set of qualifications in healthcare. It ensures quality patient care through safe and efficient healthcare provision and a healthy work environment, in addition to reducing the costs that come with clinical litigation settlements and improving service delivery safety to consumers. Clinical leadership involves developing a culture and guiding a set of tasks for quality and safety improvement. It is about concentrating on high-quality healthcare delivery, team motivation for the provision of effective, satisfying, and safe care, maintaining staff retention, and facilitating organizational support to improve patient outcomes (NHS Improvement, 2019). Clinical leaders act by setting the vision and direction, promoting teamwork, good practices, professional collaboration, and professionalism, alongside continued medical education, for effective task performance and patient care contribution. It is the possession of approachability, skills, and knowledge for effective communication, gaining support and influencing others by becoming a role model, in addition to possession of visibility and support for promoting change, guidance, and advice (Mrayyan et al., 2020; Swanwick & McKimm, 2011). On the other hand, Safe and effective care is the capability of healthcare services to achieve the desired outcome while avoiding unexpected or unintended harm during healthcare provision. It is marked by an effective, safe, and people-centered healthcare service that facilitates evidence-based healthcare services, avoids harm for those the care is intended for, and provides responsive care to individual values, needs, and preferences. According to the World Health Organization (2020), for a healthcare service to be deemed safe and effective, it must be delivered on time, equal in quality, make available the full scope of healthcare services, and maximize the benefits that come with avoiding waste and available resources.

According to the Nurse and Midwifery Council Code, safe and effective care means prioritizing others by treating them as individuals and considering their dignity, listening to them and responding to their preferences, ensuring the assessment and response to the social, physical, and psychological needs, acting in their best of interests, and respecting their right to privacy and confidentiality. Practicing effectively by assessing the need and delivery of treatment or providing assistance without delay and to the best of one’s capabilities and the available evidence is another way to achieve safe and effective healthcare. This method means that healthcare providers require effective communication with the maintenance of accurate records along with sharing knowledge, skill, and experience where needed. Preserving safety is another way to go about safe and effective care where NQN need to make sure that they work within limitations of their competence and exercise their professional duty of condor. They are required to immediately raise concerns that risk the patient or the public. Additionally, safe and effective care is possible with the promotion of professionalism and trust (Nurse and Midwifery Council, n.d). Here, a NQN is responsible for maintaining the reputation of their professionalism at all times, in addition to displaying a personal commitment to the practice standards.

However, in the pursuit of effective and safe care, a NQN faces challenges in their fulfillment of leadership expectations. One such barrier is the constant dealings with the retention and hiring of staff, Daily stress with little time for processing the events, and limited opportunities for advancement are yet another challenge promoting the high demand that jeopardizes mental health, in addition to the differences in team members’ capabilities (intrapersonal and interpersonal) and factors (interdisciplinary and organizational), limited opportunities for organizational leadership, the Lack of funding for advancement and, and the perceived development needs before serving leadership roles also play a part in disrupting the delivery of clinical leadership (Mrayyan et al., (2023). As such, the NQNs can be adequately prepared to take on leadership roles with the right support.

Teamwork in MDT as a Leadership Element for Safe and Efficient Patient Care; Second section

Leadership is an influential factor in providing effective and safe patient care, especially due to its necessity for communication, error management, situational awareness, human performance decision-making, and teamwork (Murray & Cope, 2021), especially in Multidisciplinary Teams (MDT). MDTs are a group of individuals - three or more working collaboratively- connected by a common endeavor. It is marked by shared decision-making, partnership, interdependency, power balance, and the use of a process. These characteristics mean that the decision-making process and sharing of information and success include the whole team members (Douglas et al., 2022). Efficient decision-making is determined by the right skills and leadership qualities for high-quality, effective, and efficient patient care. There is also an interagency agreement or understanding, equal membership with discouraged dominance of a single member, and incorporation of protocol for accountability and predictability introduction into the review process, especially for conflict resolution.

Leadership; 's necessity for effective teamwork is an influencing factor for safe and effective patient care. Therefore, fostering a culture of teamwork through Multidisciplinary Teams (MDT) is one of the key leadership elements for safe and effective patient care. Teamwork is one of the key attributes of an effective leader in building a culture of safety. Working together with others empowers leaders with the highest level of vision and growth. An example of a collaborative teamwork measure involves the sharing of critical metric information. This move comes in handy to ensure team members are able to comply with patient demands thanks to a better understanding of why their actions and services are needed. As such, effective communication and collaboration are expected of leaders in teamwork to fulfill a common healthcare delivery goal.

Teamwork in MDT necessitates the right skills to ensure and stimulate collaboration and interaction between members, as well as attention to development and improvement. Here, the role of a leader requires coordination of complicated tasks like involving team members in patient case discussion, time management, integrating patient and medical-based information, working environment, managing conflict and coming to a unanimous agreement for treatment plan recommendation (Wihl et al., 2020). The role of a leader necessitates focusing on team communication and coordination, further empowering professional interactions and team mobilisation to attain shared patient outcomes such as effective and safe patient care. Team competence development and team development stimulation are spearheaded by skill-based leadership, leadership training, and the likelihood of assigning MDT leadership to other disciplines and professions for effective and safe patient care. Teamwork as an element of leadership has the potential to improve healthcare delivery since leaders in a MDT act as role models with skills, knowledge, and actions that come in handy beyond the team, especially with their involvement in structured development and evaluation based on feedback (Restivo et al., 2016; Wihl et al., 2020). Therefore, achieving safe, effective patient care is possible for the Newly Qualified Nurse (NQN) by making use of teamwork (MDT) as an element of leadership. This achievement is possible with NQN’s promotion of access to communication, ensuring efforts are coordinated on par with the right framework, and facilitating a common goal that drives all team members, in addition to improving communication, promoting collaborative decision-making, and enhancing role clarity, not forgetting proper management of conflict resolution and maintenance of continuous improvement.

Conclusively, a critical discussion of the connection between teamwork in MDT as a leadership element and safe, effective patient care to spearhead Newly Qualified Nurses (NQN) in attaining effective patient care is key for enhancing patient healthcare outcomes. Leadership, with its critical element of teamwork within multidisciplinary teams (MDTs), serves as a cornerstone of clinical guidance to ascertain the best possible patient outcome. Here, leaders are expected to possess the skills and knowledge to conduct shared decision-making meetings, promote collaborations between different healthcare experts from varying fields and specialties, and integrate diverse expertise from different clinical professions. Other ways to ensure efficient and safe healthcare outcome provision, especially for NQN, involve providing effective measures and tools for communication, having clear roles, managing individual differences that might lead to conflict, and promoting a continuous improvement culture.  Having the right support and preparation (in the form of mentorship, ongoing education, reflective practice, relationship-building, and advocacy for leadership capability development) is also key to excel in the NQN’s leadership role, even with the presence of possible challenges like staff retention issues and daily stress. Therefore, leveraging teamwork as an element of leadership makes it possible for NQNs to coordinate efforts, facilitate communication, and ensure that all team members work towards common goals, all of which are an essential approach for delivering high-quality, safe, and effective patient care, demonstrating the indispensable role of leadership in healthcare.

References for Teamwork in MDT as a Leadership Element for Safe and Efficient Patient Care

Chandrashekar, A., & Mohan, J. (2019). Preparing for the National Health Service: the importance of teamwork training in the United Kingdom medical school curriculum. Advances in medical education and practice, 679-688. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.2147/AMEP.S203333

Douglas, N., Mays, N., Al-Haboubi, M., Manacorda, T., Thana, L., Wistow, G., & Durand, M. A. (2022). Observations of community-based multidisciplinary team meetings in health and social care for older people with long term conditions in England. BMC Health Services Research, 22(1), 758. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9175164/pdf/12913_2022_Article_7971.pdf

Mrayyan, M. T., Algunmeeyn, A., Abunab, H. Y., Kutah, O. A., Alfayoumi, I., & Khait, A. A. (2023). Attributes, skills and actions of clinical leadership in nursing as reported by hospital nurses: a cross-sectional study. BMJ leader, leader-2022. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://bmjleader.bmj.com/content/leader/early/2023/01/24/leader-2022-000672.full.pdf&hl=en&sa=T&oi=ucasa&ct=ufr&ei=uNt2Zs_nIY3A6rQPtueGyA4&scisig=AFWwaeZCwoCHBerL4XdKmp_lsa7f

Murray, M., & Cope, V. (2021). Leadership: Patient safety depends on it!. Collegian, 28(6), 604-609. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1322769621000895

England, N. H. S. (2017). Multi-professional framework for advanced clinical practice in England. London: Health Education England.

N.H.S. Improvement. (2019). Clinical leadership–A framework for action a guide for senior leaders on developing professional diversity at board level. NHS improvement publicafion, 1-27. https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/clinical-leadership-framework.pdf

Nurse and Midwifery Council. (n.d). The Code: Professional standards of practice and behaviour for nurses, midwives and nursing associates. https://www.nmc.org.uk/globalassets/sitedocuments/nmc-publications/nmc-code.pdf

Restivo, L., Apostolidis, T., Bouhnik, A. D., Garciaz, S., Aurran, T., & Julian-Reynier, C. (2016). Patients’ non-medical characteristics contribute to collective medical decision-making at multidisciplinary oncological team meetings. PLoS One, 11(5), e0154969. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0154969&type=printable

Soukup, T., Lamb, B. W., Arora, S., Darzi, A., Sevdalis, N., & Green, J. S. (2018). Successful strategies in implementing a multidisciplinary team working in the care of patients with cancer: an overview and synthesis of the available literature. Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare, 49-61. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5783021/pdf/jmdh-11-049.pdf

Swanwick, T., & McKimm, J. (2011). What is clinical leadership… and why is it important?. The clinical teacher, 8(1), 22-26. https://www.elft.nhs.uk/sites/default/files/import-news/Swanwick_et_al-2011-The_Clinical_Teacher.pdf

Wihl, J., Rosell, L., Bendahl, P. O., De Mattos, C. B., Kinhult, S., Lindell, G., ... & Nilbert, M. (2020). Leadership perspectives in multidisciplinary team meetings; observational assessment based on the ATLAS instrument in cancer care. Cancer Treatment and Research Communications, 25, 100231. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468294220300666

World Health Organization. (2020). Quality of care. Who.int; World Health Organization: WHO. https://www.who.int/health-topics/quality-of-care#tab=tab_1

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