Collaboration reflection and collaborative learning practices

Collaboration Reflection

Before entering the School of Nursing program, I had spent 16 years in CCU, ER, and Same Day Surgery. My personal experience has been in management where I had gotten used to delegating tasks and overseeing performance from others. In these roles, teamwork is crucial for patient outcomes. Working in teams with a positive patient outcome focus taught me valuable lessons in ensuring that each task was completed in a timely manner. In a management role, you are responsible for performance by other team members. Leading the team taught me the importance of building on the strengths of each member to gain performance improvements. This allowed me to value the strengths of other members and taught me how to integrate those strengths in ways to reach team goals.

Working in groups doing numerous projects helped in facilitating collaboration. It was effective in teaching how to build deeper relationships with mutual respect for all members. The clinical helped in fostering that collaboration with others. It enabled a deeper value in the communications were that were built with mutual respect and shared decision making. Shared decision making was interesting in respect to points being voiced by each member and the discussion that shaped those decisions.

This brought about a sense of accountability, not only for each individual, but also as a team. Where the entire team had accountability for the outcome of the project, the individual had accountability in doing their part and how they integrated their strengths within the overall team. Working on the team also brought about a group integrity with accomplishments as well as individual integrity in being a part of the accomplishment. This also applied to learning from the mistakes the team made. Mistakes taught us what we could have done different for a better outcome.

The shared decision making brought about a deeper value in mutual respect of other members. By engaging in shared decision making, each member was allowed to voice concerns and make suggestions. This allowed for a shared discussion with the focus on the project goals.

My only complaint with the SON program is the group grading. All it takes is one person not doing their part and it drops the grade for the entire group. It leaves a feeling of failure and having to work harder to get a good grade. It also leaves feeling of resentment where the person slacking is getting the same grade for doing nothing. I feel the school could remedy the situation if each individual is graded for the part they do. Even working in groups, each group member could be assigned certain tasks in the group and graded on the tasks they are assigned and complete. It creates a better sense of fairness.