Leadership Skills, Theories, and Styles to Employ for Collaboration on Interprofessional Teams

Leadership Skills, Theories, and Styles to Employ for Collaboration on Interprofessional Teams

Leadership Skills, Theories, and Styles to Employ for Collaboration on Interprofessional Teams

Leadership skills essential to facilitate collaboration in the interprofessional team include organizational, communication, and conflict resolution skills. The interprofessional team leader needs organizational skills to be able to delegate responsibilities, coordinate the team’s duties and workload, and keep the team organized (Folkman, Tveit & Sverdrup, 2019). Communication skills enable the leader to demonstrate clear and thoughtful communication that fosters a collaborative environment and communicates the team’s goals (Folkman et al., 2019). Conflict resolution skills are essential to enable the team leader to solve conflicts, which arise in the interprofessional team. They are also vital in promoting cooperation and unity within the interprofessional team.

Transformational leadership theory would promote collaboration in the interprofessional team by motivating the team to work towards a common goal. The leader can share a vision based on the envisioned patient outcomes and guide the team toward coming closer to the vision (Folkman et al., 2019). The participatory leadership style would promote collaboration within the interprofessional team as it encourages members to participate in decision-making (Folkman et al., 2019). Members of the interprofessional team can be encouraged to provide evidence-based interventions that can promote high-quality patient-centered care.

Conclusion

The EHR is an electronic tool that improves and eases patient information access and streamlines health providers’ workflow. The EHR database should contain a patient’s demographic information, comprehensive medical history, and progress notes. Informatics helps capture this information by organizing patient data from multiple sources and converting it to one in the EHR format. The EHR team should include internal stakeholders and external consultants and be handed different responsibilities. When designing and implementing the EHR, professional, ethical, and regulatory standards should be observed by maintaining patient confidentiality and complying with HIPAA and HITECH regulations. Organizational, communication, and conflict resolution skills are vital in promoting the interprofessional team’s collaboration. Besides, transformational leadership theory and democratic leadership can be applied to promote interprofessional collaboration.

References

Aguirre, R. R., Suarez, O., Fuentes, M., & Sanchez-Gonzalez, M. A. (2019). Electronic health record implementation: a review of resources and tools. Cureus, 11(9), e5649. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.5649

Folkman, A. K., Tveit, B., & Sverdrup, S. (2019). Leadership in interprofessional collaboration in health care. Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare, 12, 97–107. https://doi.org/10.2147/JMDH.S189199

Lee, L. M. (2017). Ethics and subsequent use of electronic health record data. Journal of biomedical informatics, 71, 143-146.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2017.05.022