True Collaboration

A team that works together succeeds together. Collaboration among nurses and staff ensures more efficient, effective patient care and a more supportive environment where team members can develop in their practice.

Standard Definition

Nurses must be relentless in pursuing and fostering true collaboration.

Critical Elements

For Organizations

1. The health care organization provides team members with support for and access to interprofessional education and coaching that develop collaboration skills.
2. The health care organization creates, uses, and evaluates processes that define each team member’s accountability for collaboration and how unwillingness to collaborate will be addressed.
3. The health care organization creates, uses, and evaluates operational structures that ensure the decision-making authority of nurses is acknowledged and incorporated into the norm.
4. The health care organization ensures unrestricted access to structured forums, such as ethics committees, and makes available the time and resources needed to resolve disputes among all critical participants, including patients, families, and the health care team.

For Individuals

1. Every team member embraces true collaboration as an ongoing process and invests in its development to ensure a sustained culture of collaboration.
2. Every team member contributes to the achievement of common goals by giving power and respect to each person’s voice, integrating individual differences, resolving competing interests, and safeguarding the essential contribution each makes in order to achieve optimal outcomes.
3. Every team member acts with a high level of personal integrity and holds others accountable for doing the same.
4. Team members master skilled communication, an essential element of true collaboration.
5. Each team member demonstrates competence appropriate to his or her role and responsibilities.
6. Nurse and physician leaders are equal partners in modeling and fostering true collaboration.