Community specialist practitioner's role in enhancing interprofessional collaboration

Contemporary challenges for SCPDNs in the provision of end-of-life care

The advancement in the knowledge and skills required by the Specialist Community Practitioner District Nurse (SCPDN) is integral in supporting end-of-life care. An integrated and multi-disciplinary team approach is pivotal for high quality patient care delivery, which involves individuals and their significant others in decision-making at a sensitive time. Advanced care planning and the use of therapeutic communication by the SCPDN can help to support autonomy in individuals during uncertain times, enabling them to express their end-of-life wishes. The SCPDN, guided by the evidence base, must provide holistic care and manage palliation while ensuring the patient is at the centre of all decisions.

Sharing the Same Reality, Healthy Relations Between Colleagues at Work: A Meta-Synthesis

Introduction

Good relations are important at work, leading to well-being among coworkers. Since the latest research in nursing is mostly about bullying, and lateral violence, it was important to study what healthy relations mean.

Objectives

The aim was to identify and synthesize qualitative studies that describe healthy relations, creating health and well-being between colleagues at work.

Methods

A meta-synthesis approach, inspired by Sherwood's steps of analysis, was chosen for this study. Ten articles from three continents, comprising 230 participants, were included.

Results

Two themes were identified as follows: (a) creating a mutual bond on a personal level and a permissive atmosphere through the human warmth; and (b) sharing togetherness in a greater whole, offering unconditional help and devoting themselves to taking care of each other. An overarching metaphor implicating the home/homeness was abstracted from the two themes: "Healthy relations between colleagues at work constitute the community as a common world, containing feelings of being at home, implying acting in an expression of the ethos and dignity, a culture created that makes the ideal form of healthy relations visible."

Conclusion

Nurses find their meaning when they work in a permissive environment, and when they are allowed to be themselves. Such meaning can be found through their engagement with one another, by offering each other unconditional help. Good relationships lead to a place they call their home, where there is trust and friendship.