Interdisciplinary Plan Proposal
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Interdisciplinary Plan Proposal
The following interdisciplinary collaboration plan proposal looks at approaches that the community healthcare organisation can take to implement an interdisciplinary collaboration within the hospital to deal with the current problem of staffing shortages (Schot et al., 2019). This is because the challenge of staffing shortage continues to provide a great risk to health and care of patient in the hospital.
Objectives
The objective of the interdisciplinary plan is to establish a team based approach towards ensuring proper patient care within the inpatient unit which is currently facing nursing staff shortage. To do this, I propose establishing a team based approach that will include registered nurse, licensed practice nurses, nursing assistants, physicians, clinical officers, and electronic health records department to ensure that the ratio of nurse to patient is retained as per the number of patients admitted for impatient care (Bae et al., 2014). The implementation of the interdisciplinary collaboration will be done through a smooth transition from the current staffing policy of only allowing nurses to attend to patients to a policy that allows nurses to be assisted with the unit physicians and nurse assistants, as this will also see a decrease in the workload the current limited number of nurses.
Questions and Predictions
During implementation the following questions will be looked in to guide the whole process.
- What mechanisms are in place to allow implementation of the interdisciplinary approach?
During the implementation of the interdisciplinary collaborative approach to staffing shortage, the charge nurse and the rest of the team members are going to make use of John Kotter’s change model where an eight step approach will be used to introduce the new practice policy within the hospital (Bae et al., 2014). This approach will involve all the medical practitioners where they will be made aware of how the new approaches to patient care will work. It will also be important to ensure they understand the need for shared responsibilities, especially to cover up for cases of fatigue and nurses being overwhelmed whenever they are required to attend to more than 4 patients at a particular moment (Schot et al., 2019). During this time the nurse will work along with the nursing assistant and the physicians to ensure that each patients is given the time and attention they deserve during care.
- How will the plan reduce cases of burnout and stress related to nursing staff shortage?
The plan is going to allow for the already overwhelmed nursing team to have extra set of hands during care. the collaborative framework will also see staff from other departments and nursing assistants perform duties that were traditionally assigned for nurses in cases where nurse have been overwhelmed due to poor nurse to patient ratio (Bae et al., 2014). Some of the areas that nurses will collaborate with other employees include monitoring of the IV medications which can be done by nursing assistants, checking of the patient vitals that can be done by the physician making rounds and would care during shift (Schot et al., 2019). Also during changing and bathing of patients, other medical employees such as therapists, and care providers from the patient’s family will be called upon to participate. In the end this will ensure proper quality care and the current nursing numbers will be able to work without feeling too much overwhelmed. The final part of the strategy will also be to ensure that a budget is allocated for the employment of new nurses.
- How will this plan increase patient care safety?
It was evident during the interview that the current nurse staffing cannot meet the recommended nurse to patient ratio at any time. Due to this it means that the current nurse experience a lot of workload leading to fatigue, burnout and nursing errors. These errors could be easily prevent through a collaborative approach where nursing roles are shared thus the current nurses do not feel overwhelmed by the patient demands. There will also be reduced distractions and workload which is known to reduce the attention required by the patient. The approach will also help the hospital covering the loophole left by those employees who quit or move to a new hospital due to hefty pay and conducive work environment.
Change Theories and Leadership Strategies
The change theory and leadership strategies include John Kotter theory of change. During this time the hospital team will be taken through the eight steps of implementing change to ensure that the transition from the current practice to the future practice is done in a slow and very careful manner.
The proposed leadership strategy for implementation of change with be the Lewin’s change theory Plan, Do, Study, Act model. The process will begin by first planning, where the interdisciplinary team will hold a meeting and come up with a plan to reducing the impacts of nursing staff shortage within the hospital, to ensure and increase in the levels of care for the patient satisfaction (Bae et al., 2014). During the Do stage, the proposed change will in implemented, as the nurses continue working during the Study stage (Muldoon, 2020). The Study stage will also look at the different evidence based approaches to interdisciplinary collaboration by asking questions like; are there issues of concern that were raised during the collaborative approach, were there challenges faced by the interdisciplinary team in supporting nursing efforts towards care of patients (Muldoon, 2020). The will also be the Act stage, which is the final stage of implementation and will cover action towards the collaborative approach and the challenges encountered during the collaborative approach activities (Muldoon, 2020). This stage will end with implementation of a new policy within the healthcare center that calls for interdisciplinary collaborative approach while also reviewing the hospital hiring processes to incorporate proper nurse to patient ratio.
Team Collaboration Strategy
Strategies that will be used for team collaboration will include outline duties and responsibilities of each team member. The nurse charge will be the leader of the team and will monitor each team member to ensure that they are working properly and guide the assistant nurses through the process of patient care (Combes et al., 2018). The team leader will also work with the physician to identify and report challenges faced during nursing care, deal with burnout and shift changes (Schot et al., 2019). All team members will be required to register to a social medial platform that will be used to communicate, report challenges, update the team members on issues related to care and ensure that there is proper collaboration during the implementation.
Required Organizational Resources
To ensure success of the collaborative approach, several resource will be required. First given that the interdisciplinary plan focus on dealing with the current nurse staffing shortages, the will be need for at least three registered nurse, licensed practice nurses and nursing assistants in each shift. There will also be one non-medical staff and a physical to work hand in hand with the nurses during each shift (Combes et al., 2018). The hospital administration will also increase its budget to pay for the nursing assistants, most of whom will be selected from the group of interns working in the hospital in from the outpatient unit. The current basic pay for nursing assistants is $12 per hour. Since the hospital cannot meet the policy of one nurse per 4 patients in each shift, then the hospital will be required to put more nursing interns on a retainer payment per hour for the success of the program (Bae et al., 2014). The strategy is also going to outsource for more funding to cater for the employment of new registered nurses during the action stage to fill the gap currently being experience in regard to nurse to patient ratio (Combes et al., 2018). With the current approach the hospital financial burden will also be reduced since there will be less cases of negligence law suits, the use of nursing assistants means the hospital may not have to immediately spend on employing new nurses given the current budget constraints (Schot et al., 2019). However if the policy does not work, the collaborative approach will go back to the drawing board.
Conclusion
In summary, the current interdisciplinary plan proposal will see the organisation fill the gap of nursing staff shortage thus increase levels of patient care in the hospital. The proposal will also see nurse reporting reduced level of work related stress and burnout.
References
Bae, S., Kelly, M., Brewer, C. S., & Spencer, A. (2014). Analysis of nurse staffing and patient outcomes using comprehensive nurse staffing characteristics in acute care nursing units. Journal of Nursing Care Quality, 29(4), 318-326. https://doi.org/10.1097/ncq.0000000000000057
Combes, J., Elliott, R. F., & Skåtun, D. (2018). Hospital staff shortage: The role of the competitiveness of pay of different groups of nursing staff on staff shortage. Applied Economics, 50(60), 6547-6552. https://doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2018.1490000
Muldoon, J. (2020). Kurt Lewin: Organizational change. The Palgrave Handbook of Management History, 615-632. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62114-2_32
Schot, E., Tummers, L., & Noordegraaf, M. (2019). Working on working together. A systematic review on how healthcare professionals contribute to interprofessional collaboration. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 34(3), 332-342. https://doi.org/10.1080/13561820.2019.1636007
