Working in Partnership in Health and Social Care Order Instructions
Working in Partnership in Health and Social Care Sample Answer
Working in partnership in health and social care
Oxford Dictionaries (2016) defines partnership as an association of 2 or more individuals as partners. These partners can be healthcare professionals that are supposed to use humanistic partnerships in empowering patients through the use of person-centered care (McCormack, 2004).
Howarth et al (2012) further elaborate that to provide care for patients, professionals require a collaborative approach that is composed of social workers, nurses, doctors, physiotherapists and so on. All these professionals make up an inter-professional working group that shares a team identity and are working in an independent and integrated manner (Reeves, 2010).
The NICE Guidelines have stipulated that all healthcare professionals working in the partnership must abide by the 6C’s which are care, compassion, competence, communication, courage, and commitment (NHS: 6Cs, 2012). Care states that all healthcare professionals must deliver care to individuals that will benefit them and the entire community. Compassion is responsible for showing that the care that professionals give to individuals is based on relationships modeled through respect, dignity, and empathy between the individual and them. Competence shows that those responsible for delivering care understand an individual’s health and social needs. Communication is paramount to creating trusting and caring relationships by involving the patient in decision making about their care. Courage allows us to speak up when we identify concerns we may have about an individual. Commitment is responsible for committing to providing care to these individuals.
Patients need to be empowered by healthcare professionals that are providing them with the information that will enable them to make informed decisions. When a professional is working with a patient, they need to give all relevant information to a patient, for example, educating a patient about their disease and what to do when there is an exacerbation of their chronic disease. Patients have rights to be independent and free to make a decision without coercion. This includes the patient being able to make these decisions autonomously. The decision of a patient must be respected as this is their wish and according to the Human Rights Act (1998), everyone has a right to be treated fairly, with dignity and with respect.
In partnership working, power should be shared between the patient and other healthcare professionals. A decision that involves a patient will need to be made with the patient being involved and having an opinion on it. This eliminates the situations that may arise that have resulted in a treatment or care package for a patient being made without the patient’s knowhow. Sharing of power allows decisions to be made jointly between a patient and the multi-disciplinary team.
Task 1.2
Majority of the patients admitted into this elderly medical ward will need to be seen by a doctor, a nurse, physiotherapist, occupational therapist, dietician, adult social care and a pharmacist. These healthcare professionals do not always see the same patient together. They go individually to introduce themselves and interview or ask the patient a set of questions. From here on, a relationship is created between a healthcare professional like a doctor and the patient. The patient is unwell and in need of help. The doctor is employed by the hospital to help admitted patients by treating them.
Strategic partnerships are formalized agreements that are made between the Department of Health and the voluntary sector. The Department of Health currently has 21 Strategic partners that it is working in partnership with. These voluntary organizations receive funding from the government for a specific service that it provides to the public. For elderly patients about to be discharged, Age UK is able to provide support to these patients in their own homes. They offer services similar to day centers and lunch clubs, handyperson schemes at home and provide information and advice. Inter-professional working is about healthcare professionals understanding the roles of other healthcare professionals in the same multi-disciplinary team. This understanding ensures that the healthcare professionals in a partnership have a perspective of roles of other healthcare professionals. The professionals in this partnership can be social workers or physiotherapists that will have different perspectives on an elderly patient about to be discharged. Inter-agency working is slightly different to the inter-professional partnership because it involves organizations rather than professionals. For an elderly patient waiting to be discharged this might involve the ambulance transportation service, local council or community service all ready to provide a different service to a patient.
The voluntary sector also works with the healthcare sector in providing a service to patients. St Michaels Hospice is a charity that provides holistic care and support to all those affected by a progressive life-limiting illness in Hastings and Rother (St Michael’s Hospice, 2016). This hospice provides respite care in their inpatient unit and also provides a service for patients in their home. The hospice works in partnership with the local hospital and the community in accepting referrals at no charge. The charity relies on donations to operate its service and also gets a grant from the government to pay for its operational costs. The elderly patient in the medical ward might be admitted in hospital after sustaining falls. There are services in place that help prevention of falls by minimizing the risk. This involves an assessment by the Occupational Therapist on the available equipment for the patient and how the patient can easily access it. The physiotherapist will also be involved in falls prevention by conducting a stairs assessment on the patient if they have stairs in their house.
The local hospital trust runs a programme that reduces the number of re-admission for local patients. The programme is called Early Intervention and particularly benefits people with long term conditions such as dementia. This programme is run in partnership between the local council and the local NHS trust. The partnership between these two organizations was put in place to reduce hospital re-admission and also to allow elderly people with dementia to be nursed at home until they die. This domiciliary service supports people in their homes through carers who visit the patient at home certain times a day to help with the care. The cost of providing domiciliary care is much less than the cost of a hospital admission unless it was absolutely essential that they get admitted for treatment.
A model is a description or concept of a system or set of observable events that accounts for all its known properties in a reasonable way (Oxford dictionary, 2015). Coordination model identifies individuals with multiple needs and integrating coordinated services to ensure achievement of life objectives and improvement of health. Researchers have it that the majority of individuals with chronic illnesses struggle with social problems such as homelessness, social isolation, mental health, and substance abuse. Such individuals experience difficulties in accessing fragmented and complex health care system. Therefore, healthcare providers should recognize the need for better-coordinated care. Care coordination has several benefits for individuals with multiple needs. A community where healthcare and housing providers have partnered together benefit in terms of costs, increased management with self-care and preventive care and reduced health care cost.
Organizations that are in partnership should ensure they have separate and different legal entities. A virtual entity which offers an interactive opportunity for the two organizations is then created. In addition, partnering institutions should mobilize resources such as human and financial resources which are significant in proper collaboration. Consequently, a committee should be made to ensure effective planning, control, and coordination of activities between the partnering institutions. According to John and Helen, 2010 this committee should not be biased to any party in partnership.
Task 2.2
There is legislation that ensures that delivery of care is provided for under safe conditions. The employers in the partnership have to employ people that will be able to deliver the organizations objectives with the necessary skills and knowledge.
The Health and Social Care Act 2012 was introduced to move the responsibility of social care from Primary Care Trusts to GPs. This frees up providers of Health care to concentrate more on innovation and it gives the responsibility of commissioning to clinicians. Previously the PCTs provided this healthcare to its citizens and was made up mostly of administrators. At the moment, the legislation required that clinicians run this service by forming Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). The GPs will be able to plan for the care of patients because they are best placed to know the care these patients require. The GP’s have control of the majority of the NHS budget. These CCGs are able to detect how much money will be spending through which type of services will be made available in a specific area. The NHS tariff system costs different types of treatments and this is how the NHS provider will be paid according to what treatment they performed. The private health providers also offer a tariff system and can take NHS patients and provide service especially when the NHS provider has a backlog. This legislation ensures that the private and public sectors can work together in partnership.
The Community Act of 1990 AND Health Act 1999 regulates the provision of health and social care services. They, therefore, advocate for the mutual benefit of organizations in partnership.
The Care Standards Act 2000 replaces the Registered Homes Act 1984 and aims to provide administration of children’s homes, residential homes, nursing homes, and independent hospitals. This legislation provides tools for inspection of all above-mentioned institutions in making sure that there are adhering to the legislation. They are inspected against National Minimum standards that mainly focus on the environment that these institutions have to create for its service users. When it was first introduced, many nursing and residential homes could not be compliant to the standard and they ended up closing down. This had an impact on the NHS providers because they were the only ones capable of looking after these displaced service users whilst home for them was being looked for. This also increased the cost of care for these service users because the homeowners had to invest more money on infrastructure to become compliant with legislation and they passed on the cost to the service user. As of 01/04/2009, the Care Quality Commission was formed and it took over the responsibility of inspection in health and social care in England and Wales. The CQC has extended its role by also inspecting services provided by the NHS and local authority. It also protects the interests of people detained under the Mental Health Act (2007).
Mental Health Act, (2007) made provisions for detaining and treatment of people with mental health problems in England and Wales. It also broadened the role of mental health professionals by extending the roles they can play in treating patients without their consent. The act affects the liberties of some people regardless of their location. They could be in a mental health hospital or in a medical ward, the act can reach them.
Task 2.3
Collaboration in Health and Social care allows patients to be best served according to their needs. Not all services will be provided for a patient by one institution. Therefore, it calls for the involvement of two sectors to ensure maximum positive impacts. In the case, the patients with chronic illnesses, when they are being discharged, the Community nursing team and the GP might need to be involved to ensure the patient is supported at home. Home-based care ensures that the discharged patient maintains good health. Most patients who are offered home-based care include the elderly or even those with chronic illnesses.
Many partnerships may have broad aims that have been agreed upon but their detailed goals might not be the same as those of their collaborative partners. The interpretation of these goals might also be misunderstood which may result in partnership conflict. This can include things like criteria for patient each partner has. One partner might only look after over 75-year-olds whilst the other might only look after any adult age but with a specific long term condition like diabetes.
Task 3.1
organizations that are in partnership in health and social sector ensure increased patient satisfaction. The satisfaction is often contributed by the increased ability of the involved parties to offer coordinated and high quality services to the users. In partnership, service providers are at a better position to get training through conferences and seminars which increases knowledge and skills in their area of specialisation. Health and social care partnership enhances the provision of a broader range of health issues which ensures the needs of the patients are dealt with effectively.
Partnerships aim to offer patients empowerment, independence, autonomy, respect, power sharing and help patients make informed choices. Empowerment aims to allow the haring of power between the patient on the ward and the services that can have in the community when discharged from the hospital. Healthcare professionals need to promote independence in patients (Ewles & Simnett, 2011). This includes financial, physical, psychological and emotional independence. Partnerships need to minimize dependency caused by illness by providing treatment. Partnership is cited by Cooper (2010) as a key component in the successful management of long-term illness. Barlow et al (2000) concurs by stating that self-management produces better outcomes for patients.
In order to improve partnerships, barriers to effective working need to be identified and removed. This can involve identifying areas where services are being duplicated or where the services are overlapping. As per our scenario, the discharge process needs to be effective and ensure that the patient is supported when they are sent home. The patients in the scenario are elderly and might be living alone at home and in need for a home package of care when they go back home. The nurses are patients advocates and are better placed at identifying all these patients needs and being pro-active about it through referrals to appropriate healthcare professional (Nazarko, 2002). This caused and still causes bed blocking in hospitals, as an elderly patient cannot be discharged as the Adult Social care team need to source funding for resettlement.
Task 3.2
Barriers significantly affect the effectiveness of the other working partnership between two sectors. It is often presumed that partnership increases the effectiveness of the services provided by both organisations and individuals. However, health and social care sectors partnership are often associated with many challenges which hinder the effectiveness of the partnership. To start with, misunderstanding between two organisations working in a partnership may arise leading to misconceptions and biasness.
In addition, there may be reluctance and reduced commitment towards achievement of set gaols by a partner organisation which may lead to underperformance for instance, social care centre that provides home for elderly people may not fully achieve its goals due to reluctance to admit new elderly people as a result of the increased cost of living as well as increasing in number in number of aging population. Moreover, poor coordination and cooperation between organisations may result due to failure to share information, skills, resources and knowledge between two sectors which are key issues in achieving laid down goals and objectives. Finally, conflicts may arise due to the roles and responsibilities of members are not clearly stated. Similarly, a conflict may arise in-case a partner organisation develops a self-interest rather than focusing on mutual benefits.
Task 3.3
Implementation of appropriate strategies by health and social care services should be put in place with the aim of ensuring the proper management of the partnership. In order for partnerships to improve their workings, strategies need to be put in place to address issues that have a potential of causing misunderstanding. There should be proper communication of the roles and responsibilities of each and every member in the partnership to enhance elimination of role ambiguity. Working must be done in collaboration between partners. This helps identify concerns each partner might have and these can be addressed by all parties involved together. The partners need to identify their individual weaknesses and strengths. When discussing together, the parties concerned will end up complementing each other were ones weakness is compensated for by the strength of another. Partners need to acknowledge each other expertise and this allows patients to be mostly referred to the expert thereby receiving the best service available. Families and carers of patients need to be involved in providing the right support for a patient. The carers and family know the patient best and involving them ensures that preferences of a patient are made known to the healthcare professionals. By making families and relatives as equal partners it ensures consistence of care is maintained especially when the healthcare professionals change.
The health and social care service providers should ensure the achievement of organisational goals and objectives through increased training o the staff members. This will require the pooling together of resources from the two organisations. Moreover, there should be a proper stipulation of policies, procedures and protocols for information sharing, skills and knowledge to ensure maximum achievement of these goals. For instance, no partner should hide any crucial information that would otherwise be deemed of importance to the organisation for the achievement of the goals and objectives.
In conclusion, partnerships of working are a big benefit to patients. They promote patient’s independence, autonomy, empowerment, respect, power sharing and help patients make informed choices. The healthcare professionals in a partnership must all communicate effectively in providing a care that is suitable for a particular patient. Power needs to be shared between health professionals, patient and the carers/family of the patient. This ensures that the patient receives the optimum care from the partnership. Healthcare professionals need to ensure that obstacles or barriers to working in partnership are removed or challenged. This can be achieved through effective communication, acknowledging each other’s expertise, involving families/carers and by using jargon free communication that can be understood by all parties.
Working in Partnership in Health and Social Care References
Barlow J et al (2000) Self-management Literature Review. Coventry, Psychological Research Centre, Coventry University.
Cooper J (2001) Partnerships for Successful Self-Management. London, Long-term Medical Conditions Alliance.
Cordinated care. 2015. http://www.scie.org.uk/publications/guides/guide48/coordinatedcare.asp. Accessed 01/05/16
Ewles L, Simnett I (1992) Promoting Health: A Practical Guide. Second edition. London, Scutari Press
Howarth, M, Warne, T, & Haigh, C 2012, ”Let’s stick together’ – A grounded theory exploration of interprofessional working used to provide person centered chronic back pain services’, Journal Of Interprofessional Care, 26, 6, pp. 491-496 6p, CINAHL Plus with Full Text, EBSCOhost, viewed 10 May 2016.
McCormack, B. (2004). Person-centredness in gerontological nursing: An overview of the literature. International Journal of Older People Nursing in Association with Journal of Clinical Nursing, 13(3a), 31–38
Nazarko, L. 2002. The impact of National minimum standards on care homes. http://www.nursingtimes.net/roles/older-people-nurses/the-impact-of-national-minimum-standards-on-care-homes/199558.fullarticle. Nursing Times. Accessed at 30/04/16
NHS: 6Cs. 2012. https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/6c-a5-leaflet.pdf. Accessed 29/04/16
Oxford English dictionary. (2015) Vol. 2. 6th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reeves, S., Lewin, S., Espin, S., & Zwarentsetin, M. (2010). Interprofessional teamwork for health and social care. London: Wiley-Blackwell.
St Michael’s Hospice. 2016. http://www.stmichaelshospice.org/. Accessed 11/05/16 @ 1930hrs
