Interprofessional Collaboration

Pharmacy Technicians Roles in Collaborative Patient Care

  • In 2010 the World Health Organization called out to the healthcare community to collaborate to improve health concerns
  • They strongly encouraged efforts to develop and integrate interprofessional education into all healthcare programs.
  • A Pharmacy technician must learn how to collaborate and work closely with pharmacists, nurses, doctors, and other pharmacy technicians.
  • Pharmacy Assistants must also learn how to collaborate and work closely with pharmacists and other pharmacy staff.
  • Because pharmacy technician is such a new profession, a duty we have is to educate our fellow healthcare professionals on who we are and what we can do.

Barriers and Facilitators to Collaboration

  • Potential Barriers
    • Attitude: Some healthcare providers have reservations about giving pharmacy \n technicians a greater role as well as giving pharmacists a greater role in \n drug therapy decision-making
  • Cost: Some insurance companies don’t pay pharmacists for their services
  • Not enough resources: Some areas don’t have enough resources to employ pharmacy \n technicians and pharmacists to be on their healthcare team.
  • Potential Facilitators
    • Teams
    • Collaboration within disciplines
    • When people work together there is usually an increase in productivity and innovation.
    • Successful collaborations = synergy occurs
    • Two heads are better than one

Interprofessional Collaborative Competencies

  1. Value and ethics for interprofessional practice: Work with individuals of other professions to maintain a culture of mutual respect and shared values
  2. Roles and responsibilities: Use the knowledge of one’s role and those of other professions to appropriately assess and address the healthcare needs of the patients
  3. Interprofessional communication: Communicate with patients, families, communities, and other health professionals responsively and responsibly that support a team approach to the maintenance of health and the treatment of disease
  4. Teams and teamwork: Apply relationship-building values and the principles of team dynamics to perform effectively in different team roles to plan and deliver patient-/population-centered care that is safe, timely, efficient, effective, and equitable

How to Develop Collaborative Arrangements

  • Collaborative arrangements are built on mutual respect and trust
  • One way to accomplish that is to know the following:
    • Healthcare practitioners who have an interest in the proposed partnership
    • Patients or patient groups (broad-based and influential) who may benefit from your
    • Individuals willing to share time and resources to make your collaboration work
    • Community agencies and media interests who would like to see your collaboration succeed and contribute to your community and are willing to support your effort
    • Examples of other collaborative relationships that have worked, along with descriptions of their structure and governance
    • Obtain advanced certification or credentialing in the area(s) you are asking to collaborate
    • Examples include MTM certification for MTM program collaboration, board certification in diabetes or ambulatory care for diabetes or primary care clinics, etc.
  • Also, ask yourself if what you are doing is worth everyone’s time

Building Trust: The Cornerstone to Successful Collaborative Arrangements

  • How to build trust:
    • Sought input from one another
    • Allowed each other to do their jobs without unnecessary oversight
    • Openly discussed and learned from both successes and failures
  • Trust is the knowledge of predictability one can count on
  • Other professions have to know that the pharmacist will do what is best for the patient
  • How is trust influenced?
    • Consistent behavior over time reinforces positive or negative feelings about trust.
    • Common goals or vision help strengthen trusting relationships.
    • Mutual respect should exist.
    • How do the individual parties react when the relationship is strained?
    • Such as when a medication error occurs; could weaken or strengthen the relationship.
    • Mutual understanding of any economic gain from the partnership.

Using Communication Skills to Enhance Collaborative Relationships

  • Everyone must be willing to work towards a common goal
  • Things that may help assure your goal
    • Does this person share my goals?
    • Does this individual recognize that we are creating opportunities for change as like-minded individuals to tackle an issue important to our patients?
    • Does this person have the required knowledge and ability to help us reach our goal?
    • Will this person stick to his or her commitments and be reliable?
    • Will this person share with me information that I need to know?
    • Does this person want me to be successful as a partner in this intervention?
    • Is what we are doing creating real value that will serve our patients?

Five Critical Behaviors Within Collaborative Partnerships

  • Long and short-term goals
  • Non-hierarchical and based on equality
  • They should both consider patient perspectives
  • Trust and shared vision are crucial in a working relationship
  • Should demonstrate respect for each profession’s culture

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