Healthcare professionals are first called to do no harm. We also possess an inherent obligation to act in the best interest of our patients, which compels us to continuously evaluate, enhance, and re-evaluate our systems of care to ensure we are doing the best we can, as often as we can, for every baby we can. This is the foundation of evidence-based practice (EBP). “We learned more, and then we did better.”
On the journey from “then” to “now” in clinical practice, we seek to integrate and sustain change. Each discipline adds specific value to EBP integration through education, training, and experiential expertise that is unique to their profession and individual careers. To harness the maximum benefit of this collective set of strengths, healthcare professionals must be willing to seek and facilitate ongoing collaboration in every aspect of care. The World Health Organization (WHO) has used the term Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (IPCP) to describe what could be regarded as an ideal state: collective willingness to teach and learn from one another as experts in respective fields, with the overarching goal of providing the highest quality care.1,2 One might say that participation in IPCP occurs through conscious behavior, rather than occurring without effort.
Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (IPCP) Improves Outcomes
Interprofessional collaboration benefits patients and care systems. Examples of successful IPCP are evident across available scientific literature, including:
- Complex case reports, such as care of conjoined twins3
- Studies describing outcomes from population-specific patient care teams, such as Small Baby or Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia Units4,5
- Harm-reduction project teams, such as those targeting Hospital-Acquired Pressure Injuries6 and Central Line-Associated Blood Stream Infections7
IPCP Facilitates Change
Managing and sustaining large-scale clinical practice improvements is complex and time-consuming. Education of front-line providers is essential to driving successful change. IPCP should be a cornerstone of clinical education from the outset, engaging multiple clinical disciplines in its design and execution.
Developmental care and positioning are subject to continuous improvement as new research emerges. Neonatal Therapists and Neonatal Nurses are instrumental in driving such changes, and collaboration between these two disciplines is as essential as the changes themselves. Each discipline brings a unique set of knowledge and skills that work synergistically to address the needs of babies and their clinical teams.
Engaging frontline Neonatal Therapists and Neonatal Nurses in partnership as subject matter experts, capitalizing on their expertise to provide education around new products and practices, is a reliable way to spread essential knowledge at the point of care. Bringing education to the bedside through the training and dispatch of peer-to-peer trainers, sometimes referred to as “Super Users,” can make the training more accessible to frontline clinicians at the start of a change initiative. More importantly, the presence of Super Users as part of the unit culture ensures continued, timely access to expertise – enabling expert just-in-time training and troubleshooting where and when needed. This model enhances the clinical expertise of the Super User team and the frontline care team alike, fostering autonomy and improving satisfaction with EBP initiatives.
IPCP Improves Workplace Safety Culture
Collaboration is an integral part of unit teamwork and promoting a culture of safety. The Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) provides a reliable and meaningful way to measure perceptions and attitudes of healthcare providers relevant to healthcare safety. Collaboration is assessed through subjective metrics, including how easy it is to speak up, how well disciplines work together, and how disagreements are handled at the point of care. Higher scores on the SAQ indicate a stronger culture of safety.8
Notably, a 2020 study also showed that high scores on certain SAQ metrics were correlated with lower rates of infection in NICUs. Interestingly, the inverse correlation was also true – lower scores on certain SAQ metrics tended to be present in NICUs with higher infection rates.9
A Powerful Tool
IPCP supports EBP integration. Enlisting interprofessional teams in the design and delivery of EBP-focused education can improve the quality and sustainability of practice improvements and product integrations. Team members who regard each other as collaborative are more likely to speak up for themselves and their patients, ask questions, and seek feedback. Interprofessional collaboration is a powerful tool to improve care.
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