Healthcare team building how to guide in 10 ways consists of a group of trained persons. They have different levels of knowledge, abilities, and personalities.
They share common health goals and objectives as determined from time to time by the community health needs and requirements.
- Expectation From The Members
- Who Are The Health Team Members?
- What Should They Have Among Themselves?
- Health Auxiliary Workers For Healthcare Team Building
- Characteristics Of A Health-Team
- Medical Social Worker For Healthcare Team Building
- The Physician In Healthcare Team Building
- Functions and Responsibilities of a Physician In Healthcare Team Building
- To Take Consent
- The Physician Should Always Remember
- The New Concept In The Practice Of Medicine
- Human Development Index (HDI)
Expectation From The Members
However, each healthcare team member is expected to contribute to healthcare delivery according to his/her competence and skills, which they acquire through a process of prescribed training by following a recognized syllabus of the faculty of medicine of a National University.
Who Are The Health Team Members?
Health team members are doctors/physicians, nurses, medical and health assistants, social workers, health auxiliaries, trained dais (traditional birth attendants), village health guides, and volunteers. Nowadays, the members of homeopathic, ayurvedic, Unani-tibb, and Hamdard systems of medicine are also included in the healthcare team. They also play a great role in alleviating human suffering in illness and disease conditions.
What Should They Have Among Themselves?
The team members should have mutual respect within themselves and they have to abide by the rules and regulations of the Medical Health Council, and the dictation of the respected University of the country.
Health Auxiliary Workers For Healthcare Team Building
Those who have less than full professional qualifications and training are health auxiliary workers. They are essential members of a health team in the present day concept to combat medical and health problems of a country. The trained village doctors are important members of the healthcare team nowadays.
Public health nurses or community health nurses are essential members of the health team. They have great abilities and skills in the art of communication. They can organize and mobilize community resources for the benefit of needy patients. They understand very well the human factors, economic, social, and political factors in health and disease conditions.
Characteristics Of A Health-Team
• The team should have an objective and common goal,
• The team should follow rules as laid down by the health authority
• The team should organize themselves to solve health-related problems for the preservation and restoration of health,
• The team members should cooperate and should have mutual respect,
• The physician/doctor is the leader of the health team, and
• The team should have an ethical and moral duty to protect the confidentiality or secrecy of the patient’s health records except otherwise to be divulged with the patient’s consent in a court of law. Learn more
Medical Social Worker For Healthcare Team Building
Medical social workers are essential members of the healthcare team, who usually form links between patients and hospitals or clinics. They are paramedical persons engaged in the practice of social medicine.
Their main job is to boost the morale of the patients and help them to bear their sufferings well. They also help patients in getting extra medical facilities such as procurement of transport, financial aid, and medicines, and finally arrange rehabilitation for chronic disability and illness.
As potential members of the healthcare team, they are quite capable of undertaking family studies, and social surveys to investigate the epidemiological pattern of diseases and help out health or disease control programs.
Medical social work is a specialized method of social work. It involves the practice of social casework and sometimes, group work either in a hospital or in a clinic, or other medical setup for the benefit of the patient and use all available health services most effectively.
Medical social work particularly exerts more emphasis on helping with the social and emotional problems of the patients, to have a quick and effective cure. Social work is a professional service based on scientific knowledge and skill in human relations, which assists individuals either alone or in groups to obtain social and personal satisfaction and independence.
All forms of social work are usually done by social agencies or related organizations. The processes of social work are social casework, social group work, community organizations, social welfare administration, research, and social action.
Mobile hospitals and dispensaries, ambulance services with first aid life support systems, cardiac ambulances, etc.; all are new additions to accelerate effective community healthcare activities of medical social workers.
The Physician In Healthcare Team Building
The physician is a person who has been regularly admitted to a medical school duly recognized in the country in which it is located, has completed the prescribed courses of studies in medicine, and has acquired the requisite qualifications to be legally licensed to practice medicine using independent judgment to promote community and individual health.
Functions and Responsibilities of a Physician In Healthcare Team Building
The functions and responsibilities of a physician are to take healthcare of the individual, and the care of the community, to take responsibility as a teacher, educator, counselor, researcher, and as a leader of the community. The physician has to follow the practicing law of his/her country and at the same time should be strict with medical ethics, which is a discipline that includes medicine, philosophy, and law.
This discipline mainly focuses on moral dilemmas in medical care. This medical ethics teaches us to identify the priorities of the patient and the principle to follow is, non-maleficence; that is, firstly do not harm the patient.
Clinical ethics must follow a set of ethical priorities and these priorities are to see the patient’s preferences, medical indications, quality of life, and some external factors. The patient has the right to have proper treatment and the physician must tell the truth to the patient, if needed, particularly in the case of new drugs and experiments and must maintain the confidentiality of the patient, and the patient must have free access to his/her medical records.
To Take Consent
The physician must take prior consent for the proposed new form of treatment and must verify, if the patient is competent and medically fit to give his consent, otherwise, the physician must obtain consent from the patient’s close relatives and legal guardians. However, in emergency conditions, the physician must use his discretion for therapeutic privilege. The therapeutic privilege can only justify not providing full information to a patient before prescribing emergency treatment in certain situations.
However, this therapeutic privilege is the exception, not the rule and it must be documented clearly in the patient’s chart. Fortunately, good medicine is equivalent to good law. Contemporary physicians must, therefore, be more attentive to legal aspects of patient care and must be ready to cooperate at all times with their colleagues; whose efforts can be of inestimable value. The present-day controversial medical ethical issues are birth control, abortion, and the patient’s right to die in serious terminal cases.
The Physician Should Always Remember
Non-maleficence: Premium non nocere- first, do not harm your patient or anyone.
Beneficence: The principle of doing good.
Justice: Social justice, fairness, and impartiality.
The unprofessionalism of physicians is just the opposite of non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice.
The New Concept In The Practice Of Medicine
The practice of medicine in community healthcare involves a great deal of unprofessional medicine. This kind of practice has got to accept the remark of the great medical historian Henry Sigerist.
In the opinion of Henry Sigerist, to win the war against diseases and newly emergent diseases, the entire population must accelerate the effort of the national health team. The physician’s role is not only to diagnose and treat cases but also to divert attention to the prevention of diseases and rehabilitation. This demand is to fulfill the new concept of the practice of medicine in the community with multidimensional approaches ensuring the wholehearted people’s participation in the perfect healthcare system.
In other words, to achieve the goal of health for all HFA by 2000 AD, the physicians must diversify their attention to better community healthcare rather than only limited hospital care. Their approaches should therefore be multidimensional and should play the role in the community as educators, case finders, preventers, and counselors within the changing environment of society.
Human Development Index (HDI)
Human Development Index (HDI) represents three dimensions- longevity/life expectancy at birth, knowledge/adult literacy rate and mean years of schooling, and income/GDP per capita in purchasing power parity in USD.
