Traditional Nursing Role

1. Assess the team qualities you have mastered thus far in your career and those you feel need further development.
I had thought the traditional role of nursing were more adaptable in the hospital environment than the autonomous roles. Hospitals require clear roles and lines of command. Physicians are also trained to deal with serious medical situations and absolute following orders are crucially important in an emergency or compelling situation. So, physicians have to be the top of this chain of command and nurses, who undereducated and scatterbrained, are not allowed to assume professional autonomy. When I heard the word, “patient’s advocate” first time, it completely changed my mindset as a nurse. I realized that I have to be a nurse who keeps the patient safe.
Modern health care system is much more complex and this complexity has produced that we need the team-based delivery health system to provide the best possible care (Mitchell, Wynia, Golden, McNellis, Okun, Webb, Rohrbach, & Kohorn. 2012). I am certainly working in the team-based nursing environment which challenges me every day because I am still learning and training myself

as a team player. Mitchell et al. (2012) noted that teams are groups consist of individuals and certain personal values are important for individuals to work well within the team. Maxwell (as cited in Kowalski, 2015) identified 17 characteristics that make a good team player: adaptable, collaborative, committed, communicative, competent, dependable, disciplined, enlarging, enthusiastic, intentional, mission conscious, prepared, relational, self-improving, selfless, solution-oriented, and tenacious. Mitchell et al. (2012) stated five characters of the most effective team members as honesty, discipline, creativity, humility, and curiosity. I need more training on effective communication. I need to interact more with other team members to share thoughts, ideas, and experiences. Sometimes, I assume that other team members know before I explain to them what I need. I have learned that lack of communication delays effective patient care.
2. Evaluate the healthcare team you are a member of. Discuss the health professionals that make up the team and their roles, how well the team functions, and what are the important contributions nursing brings to the team.
I am currently working at an emergency department (ED) in a teaching hospital in Long Island, New York and more than 300 patients visit the ED each day. The health professionals are following.
1) Physicians and Residents: assess and diagnose patients, order medications and tests, admit and discharge patients
2) Staff Nurses, Managers: receive doctors’ order, administer medications, educate
patients and family, and run the unit effectively
3) PCAs: provide general help related to patients care
4) ED technicians and Telemetry technicians: provide general help related to patients care and in charge of monitoring the cardiac rhythms in the ED.
5) Educators: provide the policies and education to staff nurses
6) Bed board nurses: assign rooms to the admitted patients
Nursing roles certainly are more than receiving doctors’ order and administer medication.

Nursing contributes strong emotional support for patients and family members especially severely ill patients. The presence of a caring and sympathetic nurse is extremely required and beneficial to the overall prognosis. Patients need a bedside nurse who listens to them with warmth and understanding without prejudice. And nurses are educated and able to stain a great deal of medical information and knowledge, which used to be physicians’ inherent territory before.
3. Based on the readings, in what ways do you think team-based delivery of care can be utilized more effectively in your work setting to improve

outcomes.
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together” (African proverb). This African proverb explains very well about teamwork. Health care system consists of many forms of teams and each team has different capability. If we like to see progress, each team has to have the same direction. If we can do that, the health care system can go further together. Mitchell et al. (2012) states “the most important organizational factor supporting team-based health care is institutional leadership that fully and unequivocally embraces and supports these principles in word and action” (p. 6). This article and chapter 18 from the textbook help me organize my thought. We need a good leadership in my unit to balances principles in word and action on the patients care. My unit has been struggling because of nurses’ high turnover rate. More than 30 nurses have moved to other hospitals in six months. This is not safe not only for patients but also for the units.
Secondly, nursing is the key piece of the puzzle to make the whole picture, which is the key care to make the patient get back to a normal life. However, including the patient in the team is very important. Players are healthcare providers and the patient and their goal is the same: to make a whole picture. To meet the goal, it needs a teamwork. The nurse has to work with the patient and other health care members as a team. Some patients do have many missing pieces and others don’t. In order to understand the state of the patient’s impaired health at the moment, the nurse spends the time for critical thinking, the client assessment, and communication with the client. Nursing is prioritizing, communicating, and teaching. Nursing indeed is more than a good heart. It is the action of the care.
Thirdly, we need more collaborative patient care. My hospital has a good example of collaborative patient care. However, we need more. For example, in my unit, every Friday nurses keep track of orders and reasons of indwelling foley catheter and patients’ information such as names and medical record numbers. We call it as “Foley Friday.” Because of Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infection (CAUTI) is one of healthcare associated infections (CDC, 2013), the data we have will show whether the indwelling foley catheter placement is necessary to the patient care or not and find out if it has introduced any infection to the patient. And by reducing unnecessary indwelling foley catheter placement, we can provide cost-effective patient care. Patient’s life without CAUTI and the collaboration of health care team to stop CAUTI is priceless.