Contemporary Issues in Health and Social Care
Ideally, the multidisciplinary concept refers to an approach whereby employees and personnel from a number of independent and competent backgrounds with assorted areas of specialties amalgamate to provide and fulfill thorough products and services (Lepage 2011). Additionally, Lepage (2011) claims that other terms used often to allude to the multidisciplinary notion include partnership working, collective operation, and interagency performance. Hence, the chief role for the teams involved in the said concept is to make responses to individuals in need of proficient help from various types of experts in the same field. Furthermore, the rates at which the stated multidisciplinary groups evolve and progress tend to vary globally due to the authoritative and legislative effects of the different predominant governments. Here, the health care domain was amongst the first professions to incorporate the multidisciplinary approach into their system (Reeves et al. 2010). This was overseen through adopting many medics with assorted specializations with the aim of addressing patient’s intricate and sophisticated allopathic and treatment needs. As such, this essay mainly focuses on partnership work in two health care settings, namely an acute hospital and community team as well as how policy shapes them. Moreover, the essay also brings out a critical examination of the relationship between law, policy, research, and practice within the extensive field of healthcare.
First, acute hospitals, which in turn provide severe and critical care, integrate the use of multidisciplinary teams in the overall administration of health care within the said institutions. More specifically, the said partnership care tends to happen when medical experts ranging from a wide assortment of specialties and branches of knowledge join forces or unify to administer thorough acute health care (Malone and Lindsay 2006). Furthermore, the discussed joined medical experts also possess disparate capabilities, masteries and sophistications which intriguingly end up complimenting each other’s works. In essence, acute care commonly refers to a subsection of ancillary provisions of health care whereby ill people receive enthusiastic medical attention. However, Reddy and Spence (2008) claim that the said medical care tends to be intermediate for a number of medical conditions such as grave injuries, given illness incidences, critical ailments and periods of surgery recuperations among others.
Additionally, the most paramount goal for acute hospitals multidisciplinary teams is that the relevant and involved members strive to give the most appropriate expected and speculated results of the substantial and psychotic wants of patients (Hudson 2002). Moreover, the discussed multidisciplinary teams providing acute medical care aids tend to comprise of an extensive assortment of medical experts. As such, the said assorted acute health care professionals include surgical specialists, theatre nurses, basic nurses, nurses’ helpers, intensive therapists, general practitioners, and attending clinicians among others. Therefore, the said acute multidisciplinary teams generally involve and engage a number of departments and facilities within the overall health care institutions (Malone et al. 2014). Among others, the said sectors include the establishments’ department dealing with accidents, nomadic centers of surgery, and normal wards in hospitals, and theatre rooms, intensive and high dependency units as well as outpatient areas.
However, various sets of standardizing laws, policies, and procedures across the acute health facilities tend to govern the administration of multidisciplinary acute health care services in hospitals globally. For example, the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), duly launched in the rise of 2008, advocates totally for the incorporation of red rules in acute hospital systems. Some of the medical practices qualifying as red rules consist of conducting time-outs prior to invasive operations, accompanying invasive practices with harmonization counts of medical instruments, swabs and hypodermic needles and syringes (Bowman 2000). In addition, the red rules also include patient identity endorsement with more than two resources as well as recommendation of about two nurse individual verification of the said identities and blood component branding during the period preceding transfusions. More so, preliminary to putting the red rules in effect, the ISMP also requires careful and critical considerations from various agents of the acute multidisciplinary teams.
In the same way, another medical law established in the end of 2003 popularly known as the Single Assessment Process, whose acronym is (SAP) guides and governs roles of multidisciplinary teams in acute hospitals. Essentially, the SAP created ameliorated ways and techniques of medically accessing aged adults possessing either medical or communal necessities. As such, the law aimed at curbing the increased cases of delineated collective works and nursing evaluations and analysis for individuals advanced in years (Nieva and Sorra 2003). Here, SAP instructs that acute medical services rendered to elderly people should be strictly administered only through multidisciplinary teams. Similarly, other federal statutes and directives such as the governors of multidisciplinary participation indicated in the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Moreover, some other policies and acts established by the department of justice in the United States such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Safe Medical Act (SMA), also served an equal purpose of monitoring and controlling acute multidisciplinary teams.
Similarly but in a different measure, community teams tend to be broadly termed as the key frameworks for multidisciplinary functioning due to the involvement of many medical experts who offer health services to critical patients (Cashman et al. 2004). In other words, the said teams seek to either assist or provide medical care and attention to individuals diagnosed with severe physical requirements who could possibly receive treatment from home instead of being hospitalized. More specifically, the main objective of community teams usually is to avert purposeless admissions of patients, with critical crisis on their physical well-being, to acute hospitals and other health institutions. Some of the said health crisis include worsening of a number of ailments such as progressive lung diseases like long term bronchitis and emphysema, aggravation of infections as well as taking tumbles with no physical injuries (Cashman et al. 2004). Additionally, the community teams also offer expert care services on the management of diabetic wounds, intravenous therapies, treatment and prevention of strain lesions, the administration of sedatives and provision of rehabilitation services after operations. Thus community teams seek to facilitate continued medical care and attention to individuals experiencing either of the discussed conditions. As a result, the primary objectives and goals of the said institutions ends up differing from those of normal hospitals because community health teams offer intense health services at the comfort of people’s home environments.
In addition, these community teams include a combination of doctors, community nurses, personal corporations, social workers, job therapists, verified psychologists and physiotherapists, zonal psychiatric nurses, specialists in palliative treatments and philanthropic establishments. The said teams may also be founded on the account of peers as well as several programs and movements such as the end user, survivor, and former patient campaigns (Byrne and Neville 2010). Moreover, community teams also encompass highly differentiated groups providing an array of medical health services within the accident and emergency sector to the housebound patients all through given chorographical regions.
However, the said diverse ministrations given by community teams tend to be different in countries, regions, and states determined by the laws and policies in the said areas. Indeed, several developments and progressions in the legislature and overall policies governing different areas end up affecting the community team structures in many positive ways (Gingerich and Ondek 1997). For instance, a legal program referred to as the Health Policy Fellowship whose acronym is (HPF), inaugurated in the fall on 2015 by the American Society of Clinical Oncology led to ameliorated care to patients with chronic diseases, mainly cancer (Hearn & Higginson 1997). Moreover, the ASCO ultimately widened the various clubs and unions of professionals willing and able to perform the previous tasks delegated to the endorsed community members of staff in extensively intricate and wide health care delivery surroundings. In the same way, various acts endorsed by the World Health Organizations (WHO) strongly accentuate the need for more effective and accessible community teams. This, according to the WHO officials, would not only fight social stigmatization of chronically ill people but also aid in curbing the rampant cases of human rights delinquency and infringement. Moreover, some countries like America have in the recent past overseen the publication and implementation of fresh licit and licensed laws monitoring the community’s pliability with the therapies related to the aged with severe conditions.
Therefore, a cancer patient discharged from an acute hospital to continue their care in a community team would undoubtedly have the best services from the tranquility of their own home environments. In essence, being a caregiver to any cancer patient may appear sophisticated or even appear to be excess work to handle. Nevertheless, community teams, through the multidisciplinary concept oversee the administration of proper medical care and attention (Hearn & Higginson 1997). Here, the primary needs associated to the said cancer patient include the provision of emotional support, continued medical assistance and chemotherapies, psychological help, palliative care, assistance with their various financial and occupational needs if any, and intravenous therapies among other forms of health care. Hence, multidisciplinary groups from both the acute hospital and community team could interact in order to see through quality care and attention to the cancer patient. This would be so not only for the said teams to fulfill their medical oaths to save lives but also to provide comfort and relief to the cancer patient given all the trauma involved during the tedious journey to recovery (Hearn & Higginson 1997). As such, the team of experts viable for the home treatment of a cancer patient would include a medical oncologist, surgical oncologist, radiation oncologist, a nurse specialized in oncology, oncologic social workers, psychiatrists, nutritionist or dietician, patient navigator, licensed home health aides, a pharmacist and members of the clergy.
Here, each of the said specialists would have their own individual roles in the overall community team thereby implementing the notion of partnership work in assisting the cancer patient. First, the medical oncologist possessing the skills to diagnose and cure cancer via chemotherapies and other treatments would administer the said aids to the cancer patient from home (Townsend et al. 1990). In addition to this, the surgical and radiation oncologists would in turn jointly chip in with their specializations in the treatment of cancer through surgery and radiation respectively. However, since the said doctors cannot provide bedside care to the cancer patient and offer educative sessions to the patient’s family, then a nurse specialized in oncology in conjunction with a home aide would fill in the gap. Likewise, the oncologic social workers would provide expert counsel to the cancer patient as well as the other people affected by the patient’s illness as well as aid them in applying for legal assistance if the need arises (Townsend et al. 1990). In the same way, apart from offering psychological help to the cancer patient, the psychiatrist could also recommend various medications to deal with depression to the invalid. Then, the pharmacist would be of help to the patient by providing information on how to take all the prescribed medications. Nevertheless, all the medications and treatments involved in treating cancer could end up altering the patient’s appetite thereby requiring a nutritionist to oversee eating and hydration processes of the invalid. Ultimately, a member of the clergy would be important for both moral and spiritual support in order to keep on encouraging the patient to fight on and have hope.
In essence, going by the definitions, various illustrations and other vital details provided in this essay, it would be undoubtedly correct to postulate that indeed, the multidisciplinary field is one to respect and uphold mostly within our contemporary societies. This is because, amongst the many indicated positive effects resulting from incorporating the said sector, it also aids in offering the best professional care and attention by the joined experts. In the health and social care domain particularly, the multidisciplinary concept helps in aggrandizing and ameliorating the safety of patients mainly through the guiding policies and procedures. As such, this element also aids in lowering unnecessary costs on health institutions as well as leading to career gratification. Furthermore, the partnership working of specialists in acute hospitals also aims at upgrading the provision of health care particularly for health conditions branded to be acute. Thus, through the provided information on partnerships in acute hospitals, it would be extremely true to posit that acute care is different from that offered in scenarios of chronic diseases. This is because, as shown in the essay, unlike acute care which only requires short-term treatment with minimal cases of hospitalization, persistent diseases call for chronic care. Similarly, via the community teams, one can easily deduce that the development and establishment of more similar establishments is equally paramount. This would be essential in order to provide the critically ill people with better lives and as well forestall the said unbridled instances of seclusion and labelling which they at times face from the society. Finally, as indicated in the paper, the focus on the cancer patient’s health care group within the community team set up also indicates the essence of partnership work to continue the patient’s care at home.
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