Week 8: AACN BSN Essentials and Your Future Practice (Graded)

The AASN BSN Essential that I think is most important in my future nursing is number 7, Teamwork and Collaboration. As I said in the first week, without our coworkers and our team helping us we would definitely be is some sticky situations, especially in the intensive care unit. There are times that you need more then yourself in the room to help our patients. We are always working with each other to help stabilize our patients, reposition, bounce ideas off them. Another large part of what we do is communicating with our doctors, working as a team to better serve our patients health care needs. It is important to identify own strengths, limitations and values in functioning as member of a team. It’s also very important to value the perspectives and expertise of all healthcare team members (Massachusetts Nurse of the Future Nursing Core Competencies).

As I continue to work in our intensive care unit, I will take all the things I have learned in this class with all the resources we have received to critique the way I am already working as a team with my coworkers and physicians, to better impact our patient care. I feel that nurse physician teamwork and collaboration can be improved at out hospital. We all have those doctors we aren’t fond of I am sure. With the information I have learned, there are strategies that I can apply so we can achieve better collaboration with our physicians. According to the Effects of Nurse-Physician Collaboration on Nursing Performance and Organizational Commitment in Intensive Care Unit Nurses journal,

“Nurse-physician collaboration was significantly positively correlated with nursing performance. ‘Sharing of patient information’ and ‘Relationship between nurse and physician’ were significant predictors of nursing performance.”

Resources

American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2008). The essentials of baccalaureate education for professional nursing practice. http://www.aacn.nche.edu/education-resources/baccessentials08.pdfLinks to an external site.

Kwon, E. O., Lee, M. H., Hee, J. S., & Kim, H. S. (n.d.). Effects of Nurse-Physician Collaboration on Nursing Performance and Organizational Commitment in Intensive Care Unit Nurses. Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration , 186–197. doi: http://dx.doi.org.chamberlainuniversity.idm.oclc.org/10.11111/jkana.2019.25.3.186

Massachusetts Nurse of the Future Nursing Core Competencies: Registered Nurse. (Revised March 2016). Retrieved from http://www.mass.edu/nahi/documents/NOFRNCompetencies_updated_March2016.pdfLinks to an external site.

The AACN BSN Essential that I have selected is Essential VI: Interprofessional Communication and Collaboration for Improving Patient Health Outcomes (2008). I selected this essential because I felt that this is an important part of being at the bedside which is why I went into nursing. I feel that the team of a health care team is so valuable when it works cohesively and everyone acknowledges and respects each person’s role. According to the AACN, this essential also includes interprofessional education ensuring future clinicians sufficiently deliver teamwork, good communication, application of evidence-based practice, and quality improvement all for the goal of improved patient care (2008).

This essential was important to me because it is one that I already practice everyday and with working towards my BSN, I will be able to recognize now the dynamics of the health care team, the rules needed, and encourage the team to foster these unspoken rules to collaborate effectively for individualized patient care. “Collaboration is based on the complementarities of roles and the understanding of these roles by the members of the healthcare team” (AACN, 2008). I feel that by incorporating how I learned to improve communication and collaboration of the healthcare team, I can help all members of the team see each role and its need to make the team work effectively. I strongly feel that the nurse has a vital role in the healthcare team, “they play a central role in improving organizational success, and nursing leadership at all levels can ensure that targets are met and care is improved” (Critchley, Edwards, Fallon, 2007). It is a role of the future nurse to be a key player to help lead the way of patient care.

American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2008). The essentials of baccalaureate education for professional nursing practice. http://www.aacn.nche.edu/education-resources/baccessentials08.pdfLinks to an external site.

Critchley, D., Edwards, C., Fallon, R. (2007, Nov). The importance of good teamwork. Nursing Management, (14)7, 8-12. https://doi.org/10.7748/nm.14.7.8.s12Links to an external site.

In my own professional nursing practice, essential II is most important to me.  Basic organizational and systems leadership for quality care and patient safety is what I, at this point in my career, feel I am most passionate about.  I have said before that the top job I have as a nurse in the operating room, is the safety of my patients.  We do not pass medications, we do not design care plans, we do not assess patients head to toe, we do not start IVs.  I could go on.  Our skill set is much different than that of a nurse on the cardiac floor or Ortho/neuro.  I was recently very humbled to be relearning all of the tasks of working on the floor.  In any unit we nurses work on, we have a tough job.  In furthering my career as a professional nurse, essential II is where my attention is focused.  It is said that the baccalaureate graduate implements safety principles and works with others on the interprofessional healthcare team to create a safe, caring environment for care delivery (American Association of colleges of Nursing, 2008).

My goal is to be able to work well with other members of our staff so as to accomplish a mutual goal of having the best patient outcomes possible.  Reduce risk to our patients and critically think as a team.  I run our operating room “board” and thus fall under a role of leadership and take that role seriously.   I hope that by recognizing this as the essential I most identify with I can become a leader in the processes that come down the pipeline in the future in terms of improvements in our policies and procedures.  I am a preceptor and would like to be known as someone who promotes factors that create a culture of safety and caring (American Association of colleges of Nursing, 2008).  

References 

American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2008).  ACN Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for   Professional Nurses.  Retrieved from www.aacnnursing.org/portals/42/publications/baccessentials08.pdf