[ANSWER]BAA755 Assessment 2 Essay: A Psychological Safety Intervention for Enhancing Interprofessional Team Collaboration at St Vincent’s Health Network Sydney During the COVID-19 Pandemic

[ANSWER PREVIEW] on Interprofessional Team Collaboration

Professional identity plays an instrumental role in interprofessional team collaboration. According to Matthews, Bialocerkowski and Molineux (2019), professional identity refers to the set of skills, knowledge, values, beliefs and attitudes that define a given professional group. This identity is created through ongoing socialisation processes that typically begin during undergraduate training and last throughout one’s professional life (Joynes 2018).

In the healthcare context, professional identity is important as it demarcates the boundaries of professional practice and eliminates role ambiguity, especially in interprofessional teams (Matthews, Bialocerkowski and Molineux 2019). When a health professional is working alongside other professionals from different practice backgrounds, a strong sense of professional identity helps one maintain the confidence and autonomy needed to be an effective member of the interprofessional team.

Nevertheless, professional identity can be detrimental to interprofessional team collaboration at the same time. Within the interprofessional team, there is often a determination among different health professionals to exert their authority over others in terms of scope of practice (Mayaki & Stewart 2020). For example, doctors have a tendency of exercising their perceived superiority over nurses and other health professionals who are not doctors. This determination to maintain the perceived power differences between different health professions is the reason the professions have developed in what Joynes (2018) terms as silos.

The existence of silos in healthcare professions implies that the professions operate somewhat separately even when they interact in interprofessional teams. This implicit separation can be detrimental to interprofessional team collaboration as it influences how team members interact with one another and the attitudes they harbour towards each other.   Due to the desire among members of an interprofessional team to exert their professional identity, conflicts within the team over tasks, processes and/or relationships are not uncommon. Such interprofessional disputes have been documented…[Buy Full Answer for Just USD 9: 2957 WORDS]

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Type: Essay

Word Count: 2957

Grade/Mark: 87 (Distinction)

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