The Importance of Coordination with Healthcare Professionals
The iSavta Team | 13.11.2019
As a caregiver, a lot of times, you will be interacting with health care professionals like doctors and therapists. You will collaborate and come up with a plan for the treatment and general wellness of your patient. As a team, you will be working together for the common goal towards optimum care for the patient. Often times, the collaboration and team up with the healthcare professionals are rewarding. However, there are times when you feel like there are interventions that you feel are unnecessary or are not best for the welfare of the patient. There will be positive and negative experiences along the way. Dealing with them on a more constructive approach is the more favorable option. How do you deal with the negative experience? How do you put forward your recommendations or suggestions when you feel that the healthcare plan of the doctor is not going to help on a general perspective?
What do you prepare when you go to the health care professional?
Most of the caregivers bring with them all the necessary information, including the important observation, assessment, daily or weekly reports and all the remarks observed. It is quite important that you report everything to the healthcare professional for easy and fast evaluation. You can also add your own observation since you are the person who is always with the patient. Share if you must your own recommendations based on what you have observed as a trend and what you have seen so far as you spend a lot of time with the patient. Unlike the doctors, caregivers are the ones who see everything that is happening around the patient.
Positive effects of interacting with healthcare professionals
There are a lot of good reasons why it is best to collaborate with the healthcare professionals. First is, you are exchanging insights and sharing goals to meet the needs of the patient. But also, this goes beyond that. Being able to talk to another healthcare provider and share the burden is helpful. As you spend time having a conversation, you are also able to share sentiments, get best advices and feel refreshed again and motivated because you know you are not alone in this journey. There are a lot you can learn by meeting other health care providers. They have different insights and perspective in dealing with different cases of illnesses. You might be able to get some best practices or you can also share yours.
Learning from negative experiences
Even though the majority of visits to healthcare professionals are positive, there are cases where it becomes a source of stress for the caregivers. There are times when caregivers disagree to the solutions offered by the doctor. There are caregiving plans that you will have to reconsider and sometimes, reassess if they are good for the patients. It is helpful to discuss this with the doctor, and be open to insights and suggestions. Discuss your observation and even your opinion about the best care your patient needs and provide rationale or valid reasons why you choose these options. It is always healthy to have an open conversation. The work must be collaborative.
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Caregiving 101