Essay on Cardiovascular Team: Advanced Practice Nurse

Multidisciplinary care is when professionals from a wide range of disciplines come together to offer comprehensive care that incorporates as many of the patients needs as possible. The multidisciplinary cardiovascular team comprises of a diverse and extensive group of personnel with different roles, contributions, and responsibilities. Each member provides complementary and different healthcare services to the patient as well as the family. Thus they work together to improve the outcomes and overall goals CITATION Mit08 \l 1033 (Mitchell & Shelby, 2008).

As an Advanced Practice Nurse (APN), I had specialized in cardiovascular care. I was responsible for providing direct care along the wellness-illness continuum in an acute care setting. Here specialization is optional but within the scoop of my competencies. My responsibilities included rounding supervising, ordering and interpreting imaging and laboratory studies along with performing histories, diagnosing, prescribing medication among others. Additional activities included family and patient education for health promotion, disease management, and disease prevention along with discharge planning (Scordo,& Melander, 2016). These activities were not only critical aspects of a team-based approach but also value-based health care at large. The integration of an advanced practice nurse into the CV team contributed to enhanced staffing of acute care continuity as well as care steadiness and cost efficiency. Patients are satisfied with the care, which is safe and quality-cost effective.

Since most of the patients had multiple serious health issues, it was my duty to administer medications and educate the patients about safe use of the powerful cardiac drugs as well as their families. Employ an array of holistic involvements to care for patients with cardiovascular conditions and to provide emotional support to the patients and families since cardiac issues are frightening to the patient and family since they are life threatening.

The team-based care was a nonhierarchical, multidisciplinary collaboration that was centered on the patients needs. Thus mutual respect and trust were essential in fulfilling our roles. Thus due to the dynamic nature of health care teams, depending on the patients needs my roles varied from a clinician, leader, consultant, evaluator or even advocate. Some of the experiences gained were the characteristics of an effective healthcare team. Having an appropriate size and composition and the ability to lower adverse effects caused by the status difference (physicians and nurses) helps bring the best skills and commitment to the team. The leadership was excellent in conveying clear goals and expectations of each team member thus reducing conflicts and communication errors. Promotion of cohesiveness and training to the level of complexity is highly interdependent, all these traits lead to higher quality, improved care and lower costs over time CITATION Mit08 \l 1033 (Mitchell & Shelby, 2008).

A holistic and a team approach to a patient is extremely significant due to the high positive response from the patient. The patients get more satisfied when a nurse takes a holistic approach, he/she feels that they have time for them and their problems. It can be a vital way of allowing expert guidance to the patient. This approach involves treating the patient as a "whole" person, physically, psychologically, socially and spiritually. Thus, my role is crucial in the team to ensure that the patients get the best care. On the long run, this is useful in improving door-to-balloon time, reducing avoidable readmissions and increasing adherence to cardiac rehabilitation CITATION Hul16 \l 1033 (Huljev & Pandak, 2016)

Reference

BIBLIOGRAPHY \l 1033 Huljev, D., & Pandak, T. (2016). Holistic and team approach to health care. A Journal In Intensive Care And Emergency Medicine, 66-69.

Mitchell, G. K., & Shelby, T. M. (2008). Multidisciplinary care planning and teamwork in primary care. Medical Journal of Australia, 188(8), 63.

Scordo KA, Stanik-Hutt JA, Melander S, Wyman JF, Madgic K, et al. (2016) The Advanced Practice Nurse as a Member of the Cardiovascular Team. Adv Practice Nurs 1:125