4 Roles and Responsibilities (Accountability)
LEARNING GUIDE: ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES (ACCOUNTABILITY)
OVERVIEW
In this lesson students in the various healthcare professions will examine how it is important for them to have knowledge of their own discipline, Disciplinary Articulation, which includes how they explain their role to healthcare team members from other professions. Additionally, students will broaden their understanding of the roles and responsibilities of other healthcare professions, and explore the concepts of role clarity and relational coordination. As it turns out, students from all healthcare professions have knowledge deficits concerning roles and responsibilities. They need to understand and demonstrate how to explain their knowledge of training, background, and expertise of their own profession as well those of their peer professionals from other disciplines. This content may be a review for some students, but it is intentionally included to strengthen a student’s professional identity development.
OBJECTIVES
For this lesson you will:
- Use the knowledge of one’s own role and those of other professions to assess the healthcare needs of patients (IPEC Competency 2 – Roles/Responsibilities).
- Explain the similarities and differences among other health professions.
- Become aware of stereotyping both positive and negative related to other health professions.
- Develop an awareness concerning “inaccurate perceptions about diversity that prevents professions from taking advantage of full scope of abilities that working together offers to improve health care” (IPEC, 2011, p. 20).
COMPETENCIES
| IPEC Sub-Competencies – Roles/Responsibilities | |
| RR1 | Communicate one’s roles and responsibilities clearly to patients, families, community members, and other health professions. |
| RR2 | Recognize one’s limitations in skills, knowledge, and abilities. |
| RR3 | Engage diverse professionals who complement one’s own professional expertise, as well as associated resources, to develop strategies to meet specific health and healthcare needs of patients and populations. |
| RR7 | Forge interdependent relationships with other professions within and outside of the health system to improve care and advance learning. |
| RR8 | Engage in continuous professional and interprofessional development to enhance team performance and collaboration. |
DEFINITIONS
Accountability – entails the procedures and processes by which one party justifies and takes responsibility for its activities (Emanuel & Emanuel, 1996).
Disciplinary Articulation– “the ability to clearly describe your own professional role and responsibilities to team members of other professions and understand others’ roles and responsibilities in relation to one’s own role” (IPEC, 2011, p. 20).
Relational Coordination– “While coordination is the management of interdependencies between tasks, relational coordination is the management of interdependencies between people who perform those tas