NU712 Unit 3 Interprofessional Team Analysis Example

Four Professions, One Patient, No Shared Meeting: A Unit 3 Interprofessional Collaboration Analysis of Discharge on New Insulin

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

NU712: Quality Improvement and Interprofessional Collaboration for the Doctoral Nurse

Unit 3 Interprofessional Collaboration Analysis

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The hospital, team members, events and figures are composite and illustrative; the frameworks and studies cited are real.

How the Team Works Now

For a patient starting insulin, each profession holds part of what makes discharge safe. The nurse teaches and watches the first self-injection and knows whether the patient can manage. The hospitalist decides medical readiness and writes the discharge order. The pharmacist verifies the insulin order, knows whether the dispensed pen matches the one taught and often knows what the patient's coverage will charge. The case manager arranges follow-up and knows whether the patient has a way to pay or a ride to the clinic.

These four communicate through the electronic record, pages and hallway conversations. Each acts on what they know when they act. A review of 31 patients who returned within a month in the year before the bundle found that in 12 cases, at least one professional had known of a problem that another needed to know before discharge: a pharmacist who knew the pen would not be covered, a case manager who knew the patient had no phone, a nurse who doubted a demonstration. In none of the 12 had that knowledge reached the person deciding.

Frameworks

The Interprofessional Education Collaborative's core competencies describe what each professional should bring to collaboration: shared values and ethics, an understanding of one's own and others' roles and responsibilities, communication and teamwork (Interprofessional Education Collaborative [IPEC], 2023). These are individual competencies; they say what a good team member can do.

McLaney et al. (2022) argue that hospital teams also need team-level competencies, describing what the group does together. Their framework, developed at a Canadian academic hospital through literature review and consensus with patients, leaders and staff, sets out six core team competencies with associated behaviors that teams can use directly. The distinction matters here. Each member of this discharge team is competent. The team, as a team, has no shared goal, no forum and no shared measure.

Ghattas and Abdou (2025), surveying 125 critical care nurses, found that nurses' agreement and satisfaction with physician collaboration differed significantly by educational preparation, and the nurses offered their own suggestions for improving collaboration in open-ended responses. The finding that nurses' experience of collaboration varies even within one unit suggests that a structure, not individual goodwill, is what makes collaboration reliable.

Every member of the team was competent; the team had nowhere to be competent together.

The Gaps

No shared goal. Each profession is measured on something different: nurses on teaching completion, hospitalists on length of stay, pharmacists on order turnaround, case managers on discharge planning time. Nobody is measured on whether the patient stays home.

No forum. Information travels in one direction at a time, through notes and pages, and arrives after decisions are made.

Unclear roles at the boundary. Who tells the patient the pen will cost $300? Who decides whether a doubtful demonstration delays discharge? The answers depend on who happens to notice.

Patients and families outside the team. The family member who will give evening doses is often absent from teaching and never asked what support they need.

The Proposal: An Interprofessional Readiness Huddle

For every patient starting insulin, a ten-minute huddle will be held on the day before the expected discharge, at the unit's afternoon planning time. Around the table sit the patient's nurse, whichever physician or nurse practitioner will sign the discharge, someone from pharmacy and the case manager, with the patient and a family member invited when they wish.

The huddle answers four questions in order:

1. Can the patient give the dose safely with the pen going home? (nurse)

2. Is the pen dispensed, matched to the teaching and affordable? (pharmacy)

3. Is follow-up arranged, and can the patient reach it? (case manager)

4. Is the patient medically ready tomorrow? (provider)

Any "no" generates one named action and an owner before the huddle ends. The provider writes the discharge order the next day with the four answers visible on the readiness banner.

Applying the Team Competencies

The huddle builds team-level behaviors into the work. It gives the team a shared goal, a patient who stays safely home, and a shared measure, the share of insulin starters back in the hospital within a month, reported to all four departments. It clarifies roles at the boundary by assigning each question to a profession. It creates a regular forum, so communication happens before decisions. And it opens a place for patients and families.

What Each Profession Gains

A huddle succeeds only if each profession sees something in it for them. For hospitalists, it makes the next day's discharge predictable, since problems are raised a day early rather than at 1600. For pharmacists, it brings coverage problems to the team while there is still time to change the product. For case managers, it confirms follow-up needs before the last afternoon. For nurses, it gives their judgment about a doubtful demonstration a forum where it is heard by the person who decides. For patients and families, it offers a chance to say what will be hard at home, such as who gives the evening dose when the daughter works nights.

The huddle also changes accountability. Today, when a patient returns, each profession can reasonably say they did their part. The shared measure makes the return the team's result, which is the point of team-level competencies.

Feasibility and Trial

Ten minutes per patient is significant. On a unit discharging three patients on new insulin a week, the huddle costs about 30 minutes of each profession's time weekly. The trial will run for eight weeks on 4 West, measuring huddles held, their length, actions generated and patients back within a month, with a short survey of the four professions on collaboration before and after.

Risks

Two risks deserve naming. The huddle could become a ritual, four people reading answers off a screen without discussing them; the trial's survey will ask whether the huddle changed any decision. And it could slip on busy days, exactly when it matters most; the unit will count huddles held against patients eligible.

Conclusion

The discharge team for patients starting insulin is made of competent professionals who rarely act as a team. National competencies describe what each brings; team competencies explain what is missing. A short, structured huddle the day before discharge, with a question for each profession and a shared measure, would give the team the shared goal and forum it lacks.

References

Ghattas, A. H. S., & Abdou, H. A. (2025). Challenges and best practices for moving forward in interprofessional collaboration in critical care units: Nurses' perspectives. BMC Nursing, 24(1), 317. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-025-02860-0

Interprofessional Education Collaborative. (2023). IPEC core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice: Version 3. Interprofessional Education Collaborative.

McLaney, E., Morassaei, S., Hughes, L., Davies, R., Campbell, M., & Di Prospero, L. (2022). A framework for interprofessional team collaboration in a hospital setting: Advancing team competencies and behaviours. Healthcare Management Forum, 35(2), 112-117. https://doi.org/10.1177/08404704211063584