Working in Partnership with Other Professionals

1. Working in Partnership with other professionals in health and social care

2. Introduction

3. Working in partnership with other professionals in health and social care is about establishing comprehensive and gainful associations that improve the quality and knowledge of consideration (Carnwell, Buchanan and Carnwell, 2009).

4. The partnership in health care profession involves the connections among health professionals, the service providers and users, and the family members of the patients.  The service users are vital for effective partnership working. Their capability and knowledge regarding their condition influences them candidly, physically, and socially will be a key centre in the arranging and conveyance of forethought to help.

5. Recently, different industry players existing in the health and social care sector have selected the format of partnership working in order to enhance and facilitate their capabilities to deliver high- quality services. The format of partnership working reflects collaboration in work among two or more professionals, governments, or organisations having the objective of aiming mutual interests. Two or more parties that would like to address specific goals and objectives or achieve certain goals usually create a partnership; for instance, healthcare institutions like hospitals and dispensaries may work in collaboration to serve the community. According to Douglas (2009), partnership working is a state in which different professionals work across the limitations of two or more organisations with an objective of achieving positive results. According to Douglas (2009), it is crucial for both the organisations and the individuals involved in a working partnership to ensure the presence of adequate communication, cooperation and coordination of activities among the concerned associates n order to facilitate the realisation of the targeted goals. Recently, partnership working in the sector of health and social care services has become a central focus for different industry players and the government agencies.

Before the twenty-first century, the health and social care organisations used to operate independently and each organisation used to function within its individual and distinct management structure, procedures, policies, and regulations (Glasby and Dickenson 2008). On the other hand, in the twenty- first century the effectual practice recognises that the complex requirements of users/clients patients/service can hardly ever be fulfilled by a solo agency. Even in United Kingdom, the Health and social care sector and their services delivery is shifting from the conventional acute care background into community based framework and patient/client homes (NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement 2006). This evolution in service delivery necessitates the health and social care organisations to work in collaboration and in joint venture with the other professionals and service users.

This essay shows an understanding of concept of multi-disciplinary/partnership working. Further the essay discusses how partnership working amongst professionals takes place in one setting/service area and how it has been shaped by policy. This essay uses health and social care theory to compare different models in partnership working and relates health and social care theory to practice, using my work experience as a consultant behaviour in a supported home project with autism and mental health patients.

1. Case Study

2. Miss S.M suffering from a psychotic disorder (detailed in the Appendix) was brought to the supported home project in 2016 by a policewoman. She was found on the street. Under the Mental Health Crisis Care Concordat act 2014 she was to receive health care that helped to improve her quality of life. She was protected by Children, and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Taskforce Act 2015 from stigma and could receive health care despite living on the street. She was not in opposition to fill informed consent form considering she was a minor and she had no family. The doctor signed the form, and she was admitted to a psychiatry unit. At first, she was not able to converse easily with the other patients. She was depressed, and she did not have any visitors. She felt lonely and barely ate nor had enough sleep. She was experiencing constipation, had leg ulcers and eczema. She seemed comfortable staying at the facility later on after being put on treatment. At some point, she tried committing murder with a rope. She was severely depressed and experienced delusions associated with hallucinations. The other patients feared her and at the beginning shunned her. She seemed troubled and needed social support in addition to the medical intervention. She was initially hesitancy to take medication evidenced by the fact that she threw her pills under the bed. She was socially withdrawn and did not enjoy watching television. I am working in conjunction with the care home, as a behaviour consultant,

3. I am charged with the responsibility of offering Miss S.M change her character to socially interact well with people. She needs supervision to ensure she adheres to her medication and she does not turn her clothing into a hanging rope. She needs to be monitored to ensure she takes a shower, keeps her room tidy and does her laundry. In order to have a normal life, there is need to involve various health care professionals to enhance her clinical outcomes. They will come up with a suitable treatment plan for her. A psychiatrist, a psychologist, a physician and a social worker are the principal key members required to come up with a suitable treatment plan( Petch & Miller, 2013).

4. There are various partnership model systems. Collaboration among multiple sectors, agencies, and organisations have the potential to help diverse entities achieve a similar goal. Multi-agency working model is a type of partnership where different departments work together to achieve a common goal. It requires a lot of planning, discipline, and trust to be successful. The purpose is to work together believing that this will achieve more effective results than working separately( Petch & Miller, 2013).

5. This is suitable to be applied in the care of Miss S.M to ensure that she gets the best care that is patient centred. This ensures all her needs are met not just the mental needs. This holistic approach is vital to enhance both the physician and patient factors. The purpose is to work together believing that this will achieve more effective results than working separately. Working in partnerships includes getting other individuals, organisations, alliances, and coalitions involved to accomplish the set goal. An inter-agency form of a partnership is a partnership existing between agencies( Petch & Miller, 2013).

6. I created a rapport with the patient to foster a good understanding with her. This creates an excellent platform to discuss the components of her care in simple terms she could understand. I explained to her what kind of treatment she needed, her roles and responsibility in the delivery process of care, her disease progression, the care providers who would address her symptoms and allowed her to ask any question if she was in doubt. It was imperative to determine the ethology of her symptoms and come up with the right diagnosis. A physical exam was done and a mental status evaluation. The psychiatry would then explain the diagnosis to the team members and discuss the treatment options to avoid unnecessary medications and drug interactions.

7. the inter-professional functioning allows the professionals to experience and gain knowledge beyond their boundaries (Courtenay, 2012). It is through this effectual teamwork that the professionals are able to share the responsibilities and avoid different conflicts that might have detracted them when working individually (Courtenay, 2012). The effective inter-professional working results in an enhanced, effective, and efficient model of care services (Courtenay, 2012).

8. Similarly when I work with other professionals they bring knowledge and skills which I don’t have and thus enhancing my experience and capabilities. This knowledge and experiences makes my job easy .however, working in collaboration with others professionals my main focus is always to make sure that service users are provided with the best level of care and support.

10. Models of partnerships working across the health and social care sector

12. Coordinated Care Model creates the best patient outcomes. Failure of having a coordinated care model makes a patient with a complex disease often ends up seeing a series of specialists and receiving a series of medical and hospital services with little. The health care providers using coordinated care system are able to acquire an integrated way of dealing with the chronic illnesses. There is need to adopt this form of care since it ensures the patient is treated using a holistic approach( Baldwin,2016).

13. Unified Care Management (UCM)

14. Unified Care Management model is a community-based program that primarily works with youth (16-21) who have various emotional, behaviour and mental health needs. The principal goal of UCM is to develop creative, individualized service plans that help in correcting the youth’s behaviour to ensure the youths can complete school and get employed to promote the satisfaction of their basic needs till they achieve self-actualization

1. The Health Belief Model (HBM)

2. Health belief model is one of the most widely used conceptual frameworks for understanding health behaviour. It was developed in 1950’s and has been applied to promote greater condom use, medical compliance, and health screening.

3. The HBM is based on the understanding that a person will take a health-related action (for instance comply to medication if ) if that person:   feels that a negative health condition (complications) can be avoided; has a positive expectation that by taking a recommended action, she will avoid an adverse health condition (that is taking the drugs will prevent recurrence of symptoms), and  believes that she can successfully take a recommended health action (i.e. she can comfortably take medicine as prescribed without skipping doses). The Health Belief Model is a framework for motivating people to take positive health actions that use the desire to avoid a negative health consequence as the prime motivation. For example, recurrence of schizophrenia symptoms is a negative health impact, and the desire to avoid medical complications can be used to motivate S.M to adhere to the medical schedule (Green and Murphy 2014).

4. In my opinion, I see that in addition to the above models, the providers of health and social care services must exhibit some basic values that are indispensable for the partnership working. These values include trust, absolute openness, and honesty among the partnering groups, conformity to collectively work to achieve the targeted goals, and regular exchange of ideas and communication among the partnering professionals.

6. Current Legislations and Organisational Practices and Policies for Partnership Working in Health and Social Care Sectors

7. The current legislations for partnership working in health and social care sectors include the active involvement of users throughout the provision of services, the requirement to ask permission of the patient before executing serious medical treatments like surgeries, monitoring, and commissioning of health and social care services by the local authorities and government agencies. The Health, Social Care and Well-Being Regulations of 2003 also allow the local authorities to devise and execute various policies that aim at enhancing the superiority of health and social care services.

8. Furthermore, the health Act of 1999 and the Community Care Act of 1990 standardise the provision of health and social care services. These Acts support the mutual benefits of the organisations involved in partnership working in the health and social care sector.

9. Moreover, establishing a learning environment, lobbying for realisation of particular policies by the administration, and ensuring complete conformity with the regulations are amongst some of the existing organisational policies and practices that organisations in partnership working have taken on. Moreover, majority of service providers in health and social care sectors have also joined professional bodies like the Associations of Directors of Social Services (ADSS) so as to be capable of learning emerging trends and issues in their professions.

10. The health and social care sectors have also witnessed an invasion of professional volunteers willing to offer their services free of cost. This trend and such professionals aim at improving the lives of the concerned people.

11. In my opinion, differences in working practices and policies amongst organisations in partnership working have resulted into an increase in number of inter-organisational conflicts. This has negatively affected the efficiency of provision of health and social care services to the users. Moreover, the disparities in policies related to employment have caused the hiring of inefficient and unskilled staff which affects and risks the effectiveness of the partnership working. This deficiency of adequate employment policies also brings with it unambiguous definition of responsibilities and roles of team members in collaborative working. Furthermore, the differences in monitoring and evaluation practices for evaluating operations of the partnerships may also cause lower achievements. Similarly, confidentiality and abridged access to information withheld by other parties in the partnership functioning also causes suspicion and ineffective collaboration among the partners.

12. Conclusion

13. Working as a consultant behaviour in partnership with other professionals I prefer to offer my assistance in the team in my personal capacity, and render my role and responsibilities. I would prefer that autism and other mental patients become more independent and are more empowered to take decisions. My role necessitates me to monitor and support my patients to ensure that they continue to abide by a healthy lifestyle. I work in partnership with other professionals in health and social care to support autism and mental patients. The main principles of my partnership working with other professionals were based on trust, openness, and honesty. The partnership involved mutually agreed objectives and values which were achieved by means of regular and consistent communication with the partners.

14. I believe that some of the possible outcomes of partnership working for organizations in health and social care sectors, users and other professionals include increased ability of healthcare providers to offer high quality and well-coordinated services to the users. As a result the users are more satisfied with the provision of enhanced care services. In my view, partnership working arrangements between service providers in healthcare sectors may also lead to increased training and employment opportunities for health professionals such as nurses, doctors, and social workers. Moreover, organisations involved in working partnerships would also be able to provide and manage a broader range of health and social care services that effectively meet the requirements of the patients. The multi or inter-professional collaboration in health and social care sector enables the service providers to develop a better understanding of the industry and formulate suitable regulations. Similarly, organizations working in partnership will learn new skills and expertise on how to deal with the patients more effectively.

15. Appendix

16. Miss S.M is a fifteen-year-old teenage suffering from schizophrenia. People who suffer from psychotic disorder experience delusions and hallucinations. She also experienced disorganized speech, catatonic behavior, some negative symptoms such as emotional flatness, apathy, lack of speech, reduced feelings of pleasure in everyday life, difficulty beginning and sustaining activities. She had lost interest in listening to songs and watching movies like her peers. She can communicate that she had a normal childhood before the demise of her parents. Her symptoms worsened after the tragic loss. She had no one to take, and the bank had reclaimed the mortgage that’s how she ended up on the street. S.M exhibit continuous social issues including poor communication with her peers due to her inability to detect that she was hurting their feelings yet did not apologize. She was a loner and lacked friends. Very people in the home center interacted with her for long .She was also using alcohol and tobacco since age 11.She used to smoke a packet per day and three bottles of beer per week.

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