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
- Value and ethics for interprofessional practice: Work with individuals of other professions to maintain a culture of mutual respect and shared values
- 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
- 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
- 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