Episode panel discussion on interprofessional collaboration on Nursing Notes Live this month. We learn how inter-professional collaboration between nurses and other health professionals impacts patient care. In this episode of the Nursing Notes Live podcast, I got the chance to sit down and chat with our panel of nursing experts including Heidi Sanborn, clinical assistant professor at the Arizona State University College of Nursing and Healthcare Innovation in Phoenix, Ariz. and Mary Meyer, clinical associate professor and director of the clinical learning laboratory at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan. Here’s that discussion.

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Jamie Davis:         Heidi and Mary, it’s great to have you both here on the show with us this month. We’re going to be talking about interprofessional collaboration here in this episode but before we get to that I always like to ask my nurse guests here on the show a little bit about their background in nursing. Heidi, we’ll start with you. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about why you wanted to become a nurse?

Heidi Sanborn:   Well, I actually came to nursing from the business world. I had started my career, got a degree in business, worked in business for several years. In that process, I was working as a paralegal in the medical malpractice suit, a law firm that dealt with asbestos litigation. I found that I would spend more and more time with my clients talking about diagnoses and navigating healthcare and who they should call and what does diagnosis might mean. That was the trigger for me that maybe I might be in the wrong profession. I did a lot of soul-searching and realized that, “Well, I was going down the wrong career path.” So made the leap into nursing from there and just haven’t looked back. It was clearly the right move for me. It was where I was meant to be. Now I find that I’m sort of merging those two experiences into one career.

Jamie:                   I also come from another background. I was originally a journalist before a nurse and it’s very interesting to see how you bring something from a previous career into nursing. They actually were able to complement things very well. Do you find that to be true as well?

Heidi:                   Absolutely, especially with business. The business world really is about interprofessionalism. You take it for granted. That different disciplines are going to be sitting down side-by-side in a meeting working collaboratively towards a solution. Healthcare, surprisingly, didn’t have that perspective. For a long period of time, it was a nursing meeting. It was a provider meeting. Everybody was very specialty-focused. So switching from business into health care, for me, I’ve always looked at things interprofessionally. Those skill sets really have proved to be very fruitful for me in my own career. But yes, I agree those skills I think are much-needed in healthcare and they’re very valuable.

Jamie:                   Mary, how about you? Why did you want to become a nurse?

Mary Meyer:        Well, opposite end of the spectrum here. When I was in high school and we needed to make our decision about our futures – I have been a nurse for 35 years, so you can think back 35 years ago – we women were teachers or nurses. I came from a family of teachers and I did not want to be a teacher – and how funny that that’s exactly where I landed some 30-some years later. I chose nursing because it was so versatile. I didn’t really know if I would be a good nurse or if that’s what I really wanted to do. But I knew that surely somewhere in acute care, community-based healthcare, office and clinics, somewhere there must be a fit for me.