To address the issue of rivalry among healthcare professionals and ensure industrial harmony in the health sector, the leadership of Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) and Association of Professional Bodies of Nigeria (APBN), have called on their members to embrace Inter-professional collaboration to boost service delivery.
PSN President, Pharm Ahmed Yakasai, and his APBN counterpart, Dr. Omede Idris, made the appeal in Lagos recently, when the latter led executive members of the association on a courtesy call on the Pharmacy House, where both leaders reiterated the need for healthy relationship in the sector.
Idris, who was former Commissioner for Health in Kogi State, said peace remained critical in every profession and necessary for national growth and development.
He said the benefit of working together was to improve efficacy of health system, to elevate responsive health outcomes and increase in capacity building.
Idris also said APBN would continue to raise and create awareness and highlight the importance of professionals in her collective goal and aspirations to serve the nation for better outcome and impact through efficiency.
Responding, Yakasai stressed the need for teamwork through inter-professionalism, adding that by working together, everyone would achieve
much.
The PSN President said: “Since I became the President of Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, I have been an ambassador of peace, harmony and inter-professionalism in our health care sector. I have extended my hands of fellowship to all and sundry in the health care sector, because I believe that together we are stronger.”
He went on: “Inter-professional collaboration should, therefore, be our key mantra. Inter-professionalism happens ‘when multiple health workers from different professional backgrounds work together with patients, families and communities to deliver the highest quality of care’. Our teamwork must be based on the notion that when we professionals consider each other’s perspective, including that of the patients, we can surely deliver better, efficient and effective care, which is our ultimate goal as healthcare providers.
“To achieve this will require each of us to shift our focus towards collaboration, partnership and sharing, working together in an environment of mutual respect, trust, accountability and communication.”
Yakasai, therefore, urged health professionals to commence the journey towards inter-professionalism. This, he said, would require a systemic change in practice, exposure to each other’s role and perspectives, effective and open communication, professional trust, and a system of coordinated care that enables patients to be part of the decision making related to their care.
