How do we build our collaborative partnership

Today, I had a lunch with one of my coworkers who used to work at Foothills unit 32 as well, and we were discussing how to build a collaborative partnerships with your colleague and clients.

Some people think that having a collaborative partnership means that the nurse never disagrees with the person and always follows her wishes. However, it is not the truth.

Mount Royal nursing team-photo by Tracy

the nurse's professional knowledge and expertise are important in a collaborative partnership relationship. The person has her own thinking and the nurse too may have goals for the person. However, unlike the traditional collaborative partnership, in which the health care professional holds most of the power, in the new collaborative relationship the client and nurse shared the power together. It was one my experience that I wanted to share:


One day a mom brought her son to meet up with Dr.M. Therefore, I had to do an interview with them for safety issues why her son's knee got injured and whether her son got abused by his mom. Thus,  I tired to set up follow up schedules. After two weeks, I checked the son's health history, and I noticed that they never showed up for the rest of the appointments. 


I called the mom asked how come you missed out your appointments and checked how her son was now. She replied" because he did not want to come, [and] I couldn't force him ". 


I wonder how come the mom did not minimize her son symptoms for a time, skip appointments and delay seeking care. 


Eventually, the child's disease really flared up, and the son was not getting treatment but needed to be. Therefore, I had to set up the interview again. Paying no attention to what's happening felt schizophrenic to me. I could not ignore that the son was not well and was limping. 


However, I was certainly not going to say to the mom " Well why did not you phone ? I could not believe you waited so long to reply my phone call". In contrast, I said " Things did not look as good as last time, and I am actually a bit surprised that you did not let us know. I bet there are good reasons; could we talk about them ? "  She started to disclose more information to me that she was too busy with her job, and she was divorced. No one could really help her pay attention to her son. After built the trust relationship, she promised me that she would come to visit Dr. M. on time and came to talk to me. 


From a position of knowing the mom, I felt comfortable bringing my concerns up. I knew that it might be better that the mom discuss this with me rather than the with DR. M. who was going to say " Aaah! look at the knee, They are like cantaloupes! what's going on here". 

Images "ER's in Jordan's hospitals are the real pain" taken by Wael Attili

Building a collaborative relationship, not only does require you know how to "take care of " the paitents' physical wound, but also does require you "give your heart" to them and listened to what exactly happened, which could be mental illness as well.