Fear of letting go
It's hard to have a conversation about Collaborative Care without including scope of practice as an element. And despite the fact that there is plenty of work to go around, fear and insecurity often arises around job security.
"Some of it is about expanding scope of practice or enabling staff to work to their full scope," says Bowman. "What you're doing is creating a richer team, with more satisfaction around people who are working in a setting where scopes and roles can compliment each other to enhance patient care instead of just doing of busy work."
Komenda identifies two fears to challenge: the fear of their role being replaced and the fear of letting go of routine activities.
"Most of our health care providers could take on more responsibilities so they were working more to full scope," he says about the first fear.
As for the second? While there may be comfort in doing activities that have become routine, it's not necessarily the best option for care delivery. He offers a look at how evolution has changed things for the better. "In the dialysis world, only physicians were able to put patients on the dialysis machines. Today that's evolved so nurses are doing it with limited physician supervision. Nurses are now running day to day operations in dialysis units," he says.