Professional Discourse: Change Management in Healthcare

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October 22, 2023
Myles Chamberlain
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Dear Myles Chamberlain,
Identified Problems
I work as a nurse at (Hospital Name) right now, primarily on the surgical ward. I like working with my coworkers here and am starting to get adjusted to the hospital environment. But I've seen that a lot of my coworkers have left their hospital jobs in the last several weeks. Additionally, some of the nurses assigned to their unit don't enjoy working there. Healthcare staff have been acting in this manner throughout the whole institution. I unintentionally overheard pool personnel at the hospital while I was on duty saying things like, "They do not feel welcome; they are always given the heaviest workload, and if an incident occurs, they are always blamed."
Additionally, I've observed that many patients are being readmitted owing to wound problems and inconsistencies in the dressing-changing practices of some staff members. I learned when reading journal papers for PD that some hospitals employ Electronic Medical Records (EMR) in their facilities to maintain medical records, which is highly different from our hospital, which maintains paper records rather than digital ones. In light of the aforementioned problems, I suggest ways to enhance staff-patient relations and hospital services. A study by White et al. (2020) shows that a poor working environment can lead to dissatisfaction and burnout among coworkers, eventually leading to poor health service. Interventions such as communication curricula and seminars have been shown to improve the overall working condition of a health organization and Organize team-building activities to strengthen the bond among nurses. Activities outside of work can foster trust and improve communication within the team (Allenbaugh et al., 2019).
Interventions
Ratna (2019) asserts that effective communication is a critical component of providing patients with high-quality treatment, particularly in the sector of healthcare where even milliseconds matter. With that stated, I recommend holding staff training programs sometimes to address some of the issues plaguing the hospital, particularly with regard to wound protocol and approaches that require reevaluation. All hospital staff members will participate in the staff training program, which will be implemented beginning with one medical department in order to make it manageable.
According to research by et al. (2020) examining staff training for better services and health implementation on individuals with disabilities, successful training focused on both organizational changes and individual improvements, such as learning and performance. This has strengthened my belief that having this kind of approach to solving the current problem circulating in the hospital can be solved by implementing regular staff training. Staff members will be provided time to complete their remaining workloads in order to prevent scheduling conflicts for the designated medical ward that will get the aforementioned staff training. In order to keep the hospital services current, the staff training that will be conducted will be interactive and encompass new medical findings.
The hospital is also in great need of a new compiling system that is much easier and more reliable. I suggest the usage of EMR as a new way of storing medical records in the hospital (Sutton et al., 2020). Electronic Medical Record (EMC) offers more efficiency as well as security compared to the traditional paper-based type of storing medical records (Uslu & Stausberg, 2021). In order to implement this, I have suggested that there will be a brief conference on how vital electronic medical records are and how to navigate the interface of the new medical recording system. This will be done after the installation of the new EMC and before all medical data will shift from paper-based to digital-based.
This shift from a paper-based to a digital base will be beneficial for the future of the hospital and also in improving the health services that the hospital can offer, especially since this hospital is a regional hospital. With a tremendous capacity to take care of patients, medical data from these patients can be much more manageable using digitalized medical records, as it can also be accessed by the patient online through hospital websites. The medical field is constantly changing as many discoveries about the treatment for certain diseases keep on being made. The hospital needs to also be up to date with technological advancements.
Possible Barriers
Changes in workflow also come with problems, as any changes need familiarization. One of the barriers that will occur is the shift from paper-based to digital-based. Some of the medical staff at the hospital have been using paper-based methods of storing medical records for years, and shifting to a new way of recording medical data will be hard for them. The EMR will feature a user-friendly interface to address this type of issue, similar to that of a computer, where users may first have a rough understanding of where the information they are attempting to access is located. As previously mentioned, a conference and training will be held to help people become accustomed to the new medical recording system. The transition from paper-based to digital will take place gradually rather than abruptly to give nurses and other healthcare professionals time to become used to it.
On an organizational scale, there will also be hurdles that need to be assessed. One of the significant issues in implementing the EMR is the budget of the regional hospital. This kind of implementation will need a lot of funding as new devices and programs are needed to implement this. Software that will be created to store the data of such scale will have a range of software development costs between $50,000 to $250,000 (Burenko, n.d.). Finding a fund to implement this kind of large-scale shift can be hard. One of the ways to solve this kind of problem is to seek external funding from investors outside the organization, ask for government funding, and collaborate with local educational institutions for training support (The Role of Government in Supporting Health, 2022). These while also advocate the importance of long-term benefits that the hospital will gain in this kind of shift from paper-based to EMR (Ebnehoseini et al., 2019). When these hurdles have been eliminated, the hospital's future will be brighter as it will have an up-to-date medical services system.
Suggested Leadership Style
A leader is needed in the huge changes that will happen in the hospital, and to implement the changes, the leaders must have a leadership style that is applicable and aligns with the hospital nurses' liking (Guzmán et al., 2020). I suggest that the leader adopt Transformational Leadership, also known as the Authentic Leadership style, across the implementation of the changes and improvement within the hospital. This is to also make the implementation of the changes constant and align with the target schedule. This kind of leadership will also solve the problem of nurses resigning due to an unhealthy working environment, as they will be included and taken into great consideration when something in the hospital has changed.
Bad leadership can lead to a certain group having problems with their activities as they are not organized (Bhandarker & Rai, 2019). According to Roque et al. (2020), The results show that there are positive correlations between adverse outcomes, such as turnover intention, resistance to the leader, and unproductive work behavior, and expected negative correlations with positive outcomes and behaviors of followers, such as attitudes toward the leader, well-being, and individual performance. I myself have noticed this kind of leadership as many of my workmates are feeling excluded in the place where they are working, causing the resigna...