Remote Collaboration and Evidence-Based Care

Remote Collaboration and Evidence-Based Care

 

Remote Collaboration and Evidence-Based Care

Health care professionals face many challenges in everyday practice that vary depending on patients’ needs. Health complications, uncooperative patients, and lack of support are typical. Despite these challenges, health care professionals must look for creative solutions to optimize health outcomes. They should be ready to use modern health care techniques and embrace evidence-based care as much as possible. Options always vary depending on the situation. Over time, remote collaboration has been inevitable in health practice as the need for physical visits to health care providers reduces. In this video, I will describe the basics of remote collaboration and evidence-based care based on a case study of a child requiring remote care.

Evidence-Based Care Plan to Improve Safety and Outcomes

Vila Health Scenario

The case study guiding evidence-based care and remote collaboration involves a two-year-old girl at Valley City Regional Hospital. The girl, Caitlynn, has been admitted to the pediatric unit for pneumonia and has a history of breathing problems, as the pediatric nurse confirms. She also presents with other symptoms, including decreased breath sound at the right bases and rhonchi scattered in the upper lobes. Her diagnosis confirms that the girl has cystic fibrosis. Unfortunately, she has other health and social problems, considering that her parents are separated. The doctor further suggests that visits to the hospital should be minimal due to bowel obstruction and the girl’s health status can be monitored by social services consult.

The Care Plan

Although it is expensive and often challenging, technology must be part of patient-centered care. To enable Caitlynn’s parents to take care of her as required, the doctor, pediatric nurse, and respiratory therapist must communicate with the parents. The parents also need education regarding the child’s health and how to take care of her. Some challenges have been noted in the case study as far as care coordination is concerned. Besides the parents living away from the hospital, the pediatric nurse and other health care professionals are distant from each other. Some communication methods such as Skype, text messaging, and calls have been suggested to enable the distant health team to communicate and coordinate care. The health care providers have also suggested telemedicine to help the child in every way possible.

The entire process requires care coordination through telehealth. Unlike telemedicine which focuses on medicine, telehealth is broader to include non-clinical services (Gajarawala & Pelkowski, 2021). The social services consult should be observing the girl and update the pediatric nurse on the progress. Trips to the hospital should only occur when it is inevitable. Parents should also continue receiving education about the child’s needs as the condition necessitates. Telehealth will also enable the health care team to communicate and coordinate care without meeting physically. However, the team must be ready to use Skype and other communication technologies that facilitate audiovisual communication in the health practice.

Additional information in some areas could have helped develop a more comprehensive plan. For instance, it should be clear who will be staying with the child, given that her parents work for long hours. Her parents are also separated. It should be clear whether they are coordinating to help the girl or who is primarily responsible. Such information could have helped determine who should receive remote education to ensure that the remote care achieves the intended goals.

Using an Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) Model

Health care providers should make accurate decisions when addressing clinical problems. They should ensure that their care plans are evidence-based to guarantee positive outcomes. In health practice, EBP models provide a systematic and procedural approach to solutions generation. They guide health care providers on evidence search, synthesis, and integration into practice to improve patient outcomes (Duff et al., 2020). A similar approach would help develop a care plan that enables the health care team to coordinate and provide the best care remotely.

The Johns Hopkins Nursing EBP model guided the care plan’s development. The model involves three main components: the practice question, evidence, and translation to practice (Upstate Medical University, 2021). The practice question primarily involves developing a clinical question to guide evidence search. In this scenario, the best evidence to answer the practice question would be on strategies for effective remote care, including technologies and team collaboration. The evidence obtained from scholarly sources is further appraised to determine the most relevant to incorporate into patient care. Incorporating best evidence improves practice outcomes. Similarly, incorporating evidence would ensure that the proposed remote care strategies guarantee positive outcomes.

A care plan helps health care providers organize care to meet different objectives. It is a guide to comprehensively address the patient’s mental, physical, and social needs. The effectiveness of the care plan can be evaluated in terms of how it facilitates care coordination, reduces costs, and optimizes patient safety. For instance, reducing the trips to the hospital can be considered a positive benefit. Enabling the health care team to communicate in time and coordinate care without being inhibited by distance barriers are other positive benefits to patient outcomes.

Evidence Evaluation

Evidence for developing care plans should be relevant and useful. From the evidence that I collected, the most relevant and useful was about the effectiveness of telehealth in remote care and interprofessional collaboration. Telehealth has been recommended as an effective remote-care approach to reduce patient travel and wait times (Gajarawala & Pelkowski, 2021). It also enables patients in rural areas to access health care services remotely, particularly in areas with provider shortages. Lee et al. (2018.) further found telehealth instrumental in remote patient monitoring and health information exchange. Timely and seamless information exchange improves care coordination, leading to high patient satisfaction. As described in the case study, such outcomes are needed to restore Caitlynn’s health.

Evidence can be sourced from books, research articles, dissertations, and websites, among other sources. However, it is crucial to ensure that all evidence is current, scholarly, authoritative, and relevant. I used the CRAAP (currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose) to determine the relevance and usefulness of the evidence. After filtering the sources, evidence from journal articles met the criteria for evidence to improve patient outcomes.

Benefits of Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Challenges Mitigation

Interdisciplinary collaboration is highly recommended when a patient requires help from multiple caregivers. It is the same case with Caitlynn. The doctor, pediatric nurses, social services consult, and the respiratory therapist must collaborate to achieve the best outcomes. According to Walton et al. (2019), interdisciplinary team collaboration leads to high patient satisfaction. Patients’ needs are addressed quickly and more professionally due to shared decision-making. Active communication ensures that each member of the interdisciplinary team is informed about the patient’s progress and what other health care professionals are doing. Such a collaboration when taking care of Caitlynn would enhance recovery since the social consult would help monitor the girl while updating the other team on the progress and when a physical visit to the hospital is required.

Despite the commitment to provide remote care through an interdisciplinary team, several challenges can hamper its effectiveness. As mentioned in the case study, some facilities where Caitlynn can seek referral do not have telemedicine essentials. Knowledge deficiency is another limitation. For instance, the patient or the family could lack the necessary prowess to use the required technologies for a comprehensive care plan. Mitigating such challenges requires organizations to embrace technology in care and provide the resources needed for remote care. The interdisciplinary team should be less resistant to technology and assist its members, patients, and families in optimizing remote care for better patient outcomes. Regular meetings, communication devices, and seamless communication can leverage interdisciplinary collaboration to improve outcomes.

Conclusion

Let me conclude by highlighting the key points as discussed. Caitlynn is in a critical condition that can worsen if health care providers and her parents do not coordinate. Since the doctor recommends minimal trips to the hospital, remote care is necessary to help Caitlynn recover as expected. Her parents must also be active and liaise with the social consult at all times as suggested. The importance of collaboration among the interdisciplinary team cannot be underestimated. Positive patient outcomes cannot be achieved if the team does not coordinate. Due to distance factors, technologies that facilitate remote care must dominate the care plan. As a result, telehealth is the most appropriate since it facilitates clinical and non-clinical services.

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References

Duff, J., Cullen, L., Hanrahan, K., & Steelman, V. (2020). Determinants of an evidence-based practice environment: An interpretive description. Implementation Science Communications, 1(1), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1186/s43058-020-00070-0

Gajarawala, S. N., &Pelkowski, J. N. (2021).Telehealth Benefits and Barriers. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners: JNP, 17(2), 218–221. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nurpra.2020.09.013

Lee, P. A., Greenfield, G., & Pappas, Y. (2018). The impact of telehealth remote patient monitoring on glycemic control in type 2 diabetes: A systematic review and meta-analysis of systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials. BMC Health Services Research, 18(1), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-018-3274-8

Upstate Medical University.(2021). The Johns Hopkins Nursing Evidence-Based Practice.https://guides.upstate.edu/c.php?g=1023176&p=7411252

Walton, V., Hogden, A., Long, J. C., Johnson, J. K., & Greenfield, D. (2019). How do interprofessional healthcare teams perceive the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary ward rounds. Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare, 12, 1023–1032. https://doi.org/10.2147/JMDH.S226330

 

For this assessment, you are a presenter! You will create a 5-10-minute video using Kaltura or similar software. In the video:
• Propose your evidence-based care plan that you believe will improve the safety and outcomes of the patient in the Vila Health Remote Collaboration on Evidence-Based Care media scenario. Add your thoughts on what more could be done for the client and what more information may have been needed.
• Discuss the ways in which an EBP model and relevant evidence helped you to develop and make decisions about the plan you proposed
• Wrap up your video by identifying the benefits of the remote collaboration in the scenario, as well as discuss strategies you found in the literature or best practices that could help mitigate or overcome one or more of the collaboration challenges you observed in the scenario.
Be sure you mention any articles, authors, and other relevant sources of evidence that helped inform your video. Discuss why these sources of evidence are credible and relevant. Important: You are required to submit an APA-formatted reference list of the sources you cited specifically in your video or used to inform your presentation. You are required to submit a narrative of all your video content to this assessment and to SafeAssign.