A Critical Reflection On Road With The Nsw Ambulance Service

Interprofessional collaboration refers to the coming together of professionals in the health care sector to provide quality care (Petri, 2010). It occurs when all clinicians including: doctors, nurses, pharmacists, clinical officers, and other registered healthcare professionals group up as part of a multidisciplinary team to offer the best care to patients (Doherty & Crowley, 2013). From the nursing perspective, it involves working together with other clinicians to provide comprehensive care while considering the competencies and responsibilities of each healthcare professional. According to Bender, Connelly and Brown (2013) interprofessional collaboration is successful when there is trust, respect, open communication and acknowledgement of each team member’s roles and skills. This implies that nurses and other clinicians should understand their roles and responsibilities as part of a greater team in delivering patient care.

Leadership, which is defined as “…The action of leading a group of people or an organization” is used in many different ways. Most people think being a leader is mostly about being the boss, having people work under you and just becoming successful, but it boils down to more than that. Leaders are those individuals that actually utilize their many abilities in leadership and administration to help make a better change for themselves, the people around them and the goal that needs to be achieved. Leadership is not an expertise that can essentially be grabbed from a book or article based on leadership but instead it is one of those initiative abilities that are increased through experience and understanding those real life situations.

Interprofessional working is defined as ‘persons belonging to a profession, relating between and among each other, for the mutual benefit of those involved’ (Day, 2006), whilst attempting to improve the quality of patient care and unite the multidisciplinary team to focus on patient centred, excellent care (Goodman & Clemow, 2010). Interprofessional workers in the healthcare setting can include nursing staff from all fields; adult, mental health, learning disabilities and paediatrics, as well as the wider multidisciplinary team within the ward setting, such as occupational therapists, physiotherapists, doctors, podiatrists, furthermore, expanding from the ward setting to include community nurses, social workers, health visitors and midwives. Interprofessional working enables and encourages these professionals to combine their values and beliefs to focus on the patients and to deliver excellent, patient centred care. This therefore allows them to share a common purpose and goal whilst combining their knowledge, skills and resources as a team (Day, 2006).

Leadership is defined in the textbook as someone who “get people to do things they have never done before, to do things that are not routine, and to take risks – and sometimes

Leadership is defined as the position of a leader, the ability to lead. I assure you it is much more then that. Being a leader is not easy, I have learned from personal experience. Being a captain of a football team is hard work. It takes guts to stand up and be a leader.

Interprofessional practice is widely researched, and is held in high regard within education and policy; the issue is the lack of evidence of this collaboration being implemented within the health care system and hospitals (Kenny, 2002). Multidisciplinary care allows for multiple professions to work alongside each other, while working towards their own individual goals. Meanwhile, interprofessional practice involves all professionals working together as a team towards one goal, which is the overall health of the patient (Botten, 2012). Kenny (2002) suggests that interprofessional practice is an opportunity to diminish any power barriers, and considers all other professionals roles and responsibilities. This allows different professions to care for a patient based on their education, skills, specialties, and experiences. Botten (2012) proposes that this leads to a number of different perspectives, shared responsibilities, a decrease in medical errors and enhanced staff morale. The concept of different professionals working together is crucial in patient care because as stated previously, not one profession could possibly care for all of the needs of modern patients (Hilton et al., 2002). Research suggests that one reason for not implementing interprofessional practice is the

Tunnage, B., Swain, A., & Waters, D. (2015). Regulating our emergency care paramedics. The New Zealand Medical Journal (Online), 128(1421), 55-58,6. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1712457079?accountid=8194

Informed consent is an important medico-legal procedure involved in medical practice. It's established by a detailed discussion between patient and doctor of all recommended treatment options (risks and benefits) before an agreed upon treatment method is formed (2). The complexities surrounding this process have manifested in recent times, with contrasting views on its relevance becoming apparent. (2)

In my opinion the term leadership is a very broad and various definitions are given by authors. One definition of leadership is that it is

Leadership is defined in many different ways by many different academics and professionals. A few words that resonate with the meaning include management, control, guidance, headship, direction and governance. My basic definition for the word describes it as a technique used to manage and guide individuals or groups of individuals in a specific direction to achieve a common goal. However this is a bit too basic for my liking. While conducting the research for this manifesto I found two definitions that I thought were more interesting and quite charming. Tom Landry defines leadership as “getting someone to do what they don’t want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve” (Murphy, 2010). Alternatively Otto Scharmer stated, “at its core, leadership is about shaping and shifting how individuals and groups attend and subsequently respond to a situation” (Scharmer, 2007).

The ability to work with professionals from other disciplines and deliver collaborative, patient-centered care is considered a critical element of professional practice requiring a very specific set of competencies. These competencies include interprofessional competencies that are defined in a broad general way that go beyond knowledge acquisition and include the use of clinical, technical communication and problem solving skills (Gilbert, 2005; Banfield, 2007;

LEADERSHIP- THE POSITION OR FUNCTION OF A LEADER, A PERSON WHO GUIDES OR DIRECTS A GROUP.

"The action of leading a group of people or an organization, or the ability to do this."

According to Business Dictionary.com, leadership is defined as the individuals who are the leaders in an organization, regarded collectively. It also can be define as the activity of leading a group of people or an organization or the ability to do this. Leadership involves the establishing of a clear vision, sharing the vision with other so that they will follow willingly, providing the needed information, knowledge, and methods to realize the vision and coordinating and balancing the conflicts interests of all members and stakeholders.

Competency refers to a collection of commitments, abilities, skills, and knowledge that enable an individual or organization to act effectively in a particular situation or job. In most instances, competency outlines the adequacy of skills and knowledge that enable an individual to operate effectively in armed situations. Competency and clinical reasoning mean a lot for my specific area of advanced practice nursing because all nurses need clinical judgment to make relevant and informed decisions while taking care of patients. Such decisions have immense impacts on the actions of the healthcare professionals as well as the delivery of quality healthcare to patients. I can use different approaches and strategies to demonstrate