Catherine Owens

 Teamwork
A form of interdisciplinary collaborative care that I have seen is when I am at work. The team comes together as one to include lab techs, Oncologist, RN, schedulers and our radiology team, research team. Every once in a while I am fortunate enough to shadow the Oncologist which is a great opportunity for me as a nursing student to see the entire process. In this case the doctor had recommended that this patient have a CT scan done today in the clinic and also wanted the patient to get scheduled for a thoracentesis. He had asked me to put in an order for additional blood work since we already had labs done on her. I was able to put in the order and inform our lab techs that we added it on and needed to use the “just in case” tube.  Once the doctor was done with this patient he had sent in his RN to go over what the chemotherapy drugs and how the remainder of the day would go for her. I walked her over to the scheduler to get the patient scheduled for a CT and the thoracentesis. Once our CT tech was available I walked the patient and her family over there before she headed over for the thoracentesis.     
          The patient was able to move from one area in the clinic to another with a very smooth transition and her needs were met. Our schedulers will sit with the patient and schedule the upcoming appointments and any outside appointments that the Oncologist has ordered making it easier (typically) on the patient. As a new nurse I don’t think I would have done anything differently as the patient didn’t have to travel all around and the RN even provided her with a new patient portfolio with all the resources she will need at this time. adding to my original post. As I had stated in my scenario is that the patient was able to move throughout the clinic smoothly with all of the team members she was working with and we too were able to communicate efficiently. In one of our reading assignments for the week, Patricia Yoder-Wise (p321) states that “teams are critical for patient safety because they encourage frequent and ongoing communication and create a safety net.” I read that and I think about when a patient is at our clinic or just in general and how crucial interdisciplinary collaborative care is. If one member misses something when meeting with the patient there are others involved in the care vs just one nurse who could be very distracted during that interaction.

Reference
Yoder-Wise, P. (2015). Leading and managing in nursing 6th edition. St. Louis, MO. Elsevier Mosby. retrieved from https://ambassadored.vitalsource.com

Respond to the discussion above.