The healthcare team

As a nursing assistant, you will work as a part of an interdisciplinary healthcare team. A healthcare team is a group of people from various fields who work together to provide holistic client care, meaning caring for their physical and emotional needs.

Alright, there are several members of the healthcare team and all their roles are important and complementary to one another.

Healthcare team members include the physician, or doctor; dietician; pharmacist; physical therapist; laboratory technician; cleric; social worker; occupational therapist; nurse; advanced practice nurse; and nursing assistant.Let’s start with physicians, who diagnose and treat diseases.

The type of diseases physicians treat varies based on their medical speciality. For example, cardiologists treat diseases of the heart, such as myocardial infarction, commonly known as a heart attack.

Pulmonologists, on the other hand, treat lung diseases, such as lung infections, also known as pneumonia. There are also surgical specialties that use surgery to treat people’s conditions, such as cardiac surgery and neurological surgery.Another member of the healthcare team is the dietician, or the nutritionist, who evaluates the nutritional needs of the clients and teaches them about those needs.

Next is the pharmacist, who dispenses prescribed drugs for clients and provides consultation on drug selection and possible interactions between drugs.

Also, there’s the physical therapist whose main job is the rehabilitation of the clients, which means restoring their normal level of function and movement after an illness or an accident.

A laboratory technician is the one who collects specimens from the clients, such as blood, stool, and urine, and runs various tests and reports their results.

Now, as a part of holistic care, a cleric supports the spiritual needs of the client. Also, a social worker helps clients in dealing with emotional, social, and any other issues that affect their condition.

Occupational therapists also play a key role in the rehabilitation of clients, especially related to activities of daily living.

One important component of the healthcare team is the nursing team, which works to carry out healthcare providers’ orders and provide nursing care for the clients.

Now, the nursing team consists of nurses and nursing assistants. The nurse can be a registered nurse, or RN; a licensed practical nurse, or LPN, also known in some states as a licensed vocational nurse, or LVN; and an advanced practice registered nurse, or APRN.

The advanced practice registered nurses have the broadest knowledge and scope of practice among nurses. Actually, they can be the client’s primary healthcare provider and are qualified to diagnose and treat diseases.Alright, nurses can play different roles in the nursing team.

At the top of the nursing team pyramid, there’s the chief nursing officer, or CNO, who is responsible for the whole nursing services delivered to clients across the entire healthcare facility.

Then there’s the director of nursing, or DON, who supervises the care of clients in a particular department in the facility.

Now, within a particular unit in the department, there’s a unit manager who directs the nursing care in a particular section or floor of the facility over 24 hours.

The charge nurse is a registered nurse or a licensed practical nurse who supervises other nurses and nursing assistants working under their supervision.

Also, there’s the quality assurance nurse, or QA, who evaluates employees’ practice and behaviors to ensure qualitative measures are being met.

A QA also helps in creating policies to support best practice to continually improve the quality of nursing care. Finally, we have the clinical nurse educator whose main task is to teach other nurses the knowledge and skills necessary to improve the nursing care and to maintain safety of clients and nurses.

Alright, nursing team duties are organized based on the setting: whether it’s a home setting; long-term care setting, such as nursing homes; or a hospital setting.

In all of these settings, the registered nurse creates a nursing care plan, and other nurses and nursing assistants follow this plan with the clients and sometimes with their family.

Now, in a hospital setting, there are four different nursing team models that organize nursing team roles and duties. First, is the primary nursing model in which a registered nurse is responsible for several clients and carries out all of the nursing duties for each of them, such as administering medications, dressing their wounds, and assessing their condition.

In this model, a licensed practical nurse and a nursing assistant help the registered nurse as needed.Second is the functional nursing model in which a nurse is responsible for the same task for all clients in a unit in the hospital.

For example, a nurse might be responsible for administering medications for all clients in the unit, while another nurse is responsible for administering intravenous fluids.

In this model, a nursing assistant might be responsible for taking the vital signs for the clients, while another serves meals for them.

Next is the team nursing model in which a team leader, a registered nurse, assigns different nursing tasks to members of the nursing team based on each member’s skills, knowledge, and level of responsibility.

For example, a registered nurse performs the more advanced tasks, such as inserting a nasogastric tube into the client, which is a tube that delivers food and medications to the client’s stomach or administers intravenous medication.

A licensed practical nurse might be responsible for the less advanced tasks, such as cleaning a wound or administering oral medications.

A nursing assistant will be responsible for the more basic tasks, such as bed-making and bathing the client.Finally, there’s the client-centered care model in which members of the nursing team are cross-trained to do tasks that are traditionally performed by other members of the healthcare team.

For example, a registered nurse or a nursing assistant may withdraw a blood sample from the client which is typically done by a laboratory technician.

This helps in meeting the client’s needs more efficiently while, at the same time, reduces costs. All right, as a quick recap… The healthcare team is an interdisciplinary group of people who work together to provide comprehensive physical and emotional care for clients.

One important component of the healthcare team is the nursing team which consists of registered nurses, advanced practice registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and nursing assistants.

The nurse can have different roles in the nursing team, such as the chief nursing officer, director of nursing, unit manager, charge nurse, quality assurance nurse, and clinical nurse educator.

To deliver client care efficiently, the nursing team in a hospital setting can be organized in different models such as the primary nursing model, the functional nursing model, the team nursing model, and the client-centered care model.