Interdisciplinary collaboration and interprofessional collaboration are terms used to describe cooperative

relationships among actively engaged professionals where healthcare decision-making is shared to

combine their collective knowledge and skills to care for their patients.
(Collaboration is a term commonly used in research, clinical practice, and health professions
education. There are collaborations in almost every aspect of health, such as patient advocacy and
health care collaboratives, collaborative learning, interprofessional collaboration in practice and in
education, health care value collaborations, business collaborations, collaborative efforts in research
and funding. At its core, collaboration occurs when 2 or more entities work together to produce a
desired and shared outcome)
All the professionals are working toward the same goal: positive patient outcomes.
(If we wish to succeed in improving outcomes for students, practitioners, patients, and populations,
then we need to consider working together in these environments through collaborations.)
Interprofessional collaboration is crucial when caring for patients because the open exchange of ideas,
experience, and knowledge helps the professionals develop a comprehensive plan of care.
“According to the World Health Organization, by implementing interprofessional collaboration and
learning to work together and respecting one another's perspectives in healthcare, multiple disciplines
can work more effectively as a team to help improve patient outcomes”
It is important for educators and administrators to realize the potential for preparing collaborators by
developing a collaborative approach and interprofessional educational activities and opportunities.
Successful interprofessional collaborative education experiences will foster a willingness to participate
in interprofessional collaboration efforts on behalf of patients.
Informaticists must recognize their position on the team to promote interprofessional collaboration; so
too, each professional must appreciate that they are part of an interprofessional team and are obligated
to collaborate with the other team members for the patient's best interest to provide quality patient
care to every patient. Informaticists must be willing to share, communicate, and deliberate with other
professionals caring for the same patient to achieve the best outcome for the patient. All healthcare
professionals must work together to enhance quality and secure the most positive patient outcomes
for each and every patient treated.
According to Kuziemsky and Reeves (2012), "Informatics is more than just technology. Rather it is an
interdisciplinary science" (p. 437). The informaticist can facilitate interprofessional collaboration to
improve patient care by enhancing the capability for sharing data and information in both
synchronous and asynchronous formats. Therefore, the informaticist's role is critical to facilitate data,
information, and knowledge exchange in a safe and secure environment that affords professionals
connectivity, access, and confidence in their ability to collaborate.

summary
Patient safety is an important and ubiquitous issue in health care. This chapter explored the
characteristics of a safety culture and technologies designed to promote patient safety. The need to
evaluate errors carefully to determine why and how they occurred and how workflow processes might
be changed to prevent future errors of the same type was emphasized.
Technology is changing rapidly, and the culture of sharing related to technology implementation, error
reporting, and troubleshooting should prompt continuous process improvements. The key for
organizations is to invest in their users and choose wisely so that the technologies they are adopting
will not negatively impact safety and will be interoperable and easily upgradable as technologies and
safety practices evolve.
Organizations must make a commitment to a safety culture in which everyone at every level is
committed to patient safety at every moment. In an ideal world, every- one would first stop and think "Is
this safe?" before every action, workarounds would not occur, and everyone would embrace the
technologies and workflow processes designed to promote patient safety. Table 15-1 provides a list of
websites to consult for updates on patient safety technologies. The nurse informaticists, healthcare
providers, patients, ancillary team members, administrators, settings/environments, infrastruc- tures,
and technologies must all work together to create a safety culture. Every orga- nization must provide
safe, quality health care and prevent harm or adverse events for every patient under its care by ensuring
that patient safety is critical to the organiza- tion's mission.