Discussion: Environmental Stressors

Purpose: A Comment to Discussion

Thing to Remember:

Answer this discussion with opinions/ideas creatively and clearly. Supports post using several outside, peer-reviewed sources.
1 References, find resources that are 5 years or less
No errors with APA format.
Discussion:

An effective team is one that can communicate. This comes from an understanding of the general scope of practice for the team member. Often times though, an effective team is one that has worked together previously, and is able to read the other team members subtle cues of intent and frustration; which comes from time spent in the workplace. Mutual trust and respect is another important aspect to an effective team.

Discussion: Environmental Stressors

Discussion: Environmental Stressors

One study suggests that each workplace conducts a thirty-one-item questionnaire to help discover where faults in teamwork may lie. Seven categories in the Primary Care Team Dynamics are: conditions for team effectiveness, shared understanding, process for accountability, process for communication and information exchange, process for conflict resolution, acting and feeling like a team, and perceived team effectiveness (Song et al, 2015). Using this survey can potentially discover areas of strength and weakness in the workplace in terms of inter-professional collaboration.

Situations that make the team difficult to work together can be new team members, outside or environmental stressors, or even a situation where emergent teamwork is required, such as a code blue. A failure to collaborate effectively will end up affecting the patients, families, and the clinicians adversely. It will inhibit effective patient care, decrease job satisfaction, and instill a sense of hostility and competitiveness in the workplace (Hamric, Hanson, Tracy, & O’Grady, 2014). A lack of leadership and direction can also serve to fragment teamwork over time. Overlapping scopes of practice can lead to a difference of opinions on what is needed clinically to treat the patient and cause infighting to ensue. This wastes time, resources, and decreases patient outcomes as the healthcare team struggles to come to an agreement on the choice of action. In fighting can also stem from seemingly innocent avenues like patient advocacy. Being a patient advocate can sometimes place the nurse in a position of opposition of family, and the rest of the healthcare team. As nurses, we have a sense of duty to accommodate the patient autonomy in their choice of treatment, even at the expense of the other members of the team. This can create barriers to communication and a breakdown of the team dynamics.

Teamwork is a difficult accomplishment, especially in the healthcare field. Effective teamwork can be even more difficult, as competing factors come into play, such as patient advocacy, patient autonomy, differing perspectives of disciplines, and personality conflicts. A base understanding and acceptance of each other’s disciplines is vital to the success or failure of the teams. The advanced practice nurse has the unique opportunity to improve patient outcomes using their graduate preparation in medical knowledge, position, clinical experience, and communication abilities. One potential solution is the act of teaming, instead of forming a set team. Teaming is temporary, possibly geographically dispersed groups of people who use innovation to overcome a clinical challenge before moving on to the next challenge with a different group (Ulrich, 2017). Using teaming, the “team” is forced to focus only on the problem at hand. This can eliminate the problem of personality or perspective conflicts in long term teams.

Reference:

Hamric, A. B., Hanson, C. M., Tracy, M. F., & O’Grady, E. T. (2014). Advanced practice nursing: An integrative approach (5th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.

Song, H., Chien, A. T., Fisher, J., Martin, J., Peters, A. S., Hacker, K., Rosenthal, M. B., & Singer, S. J. (2015). Development and validation of the primary care team dynamics survey. Health Services Research, 50(3), 897-921. doi:10.1111/1475-6773.12257

Ulrich, B. (2017). Using Teams to Improve and Performance. Nephrology Nursing Journal, 44(2), 141-152.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

 

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation

Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality

Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes

I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.