Interview and Interdisciplinary Issue Identification Paper

Interview and Interdisciplinary Issue Identification Paper

Interview Summary

I interviewed Mr. Johnson to obtain insights into the organizational issues that prompt collaborative and Interdisciplinary solutions. Mr. Johnson (not his real name) is a nurse manager at the Palmdale Regional Medical Center, California. In his capacity as a nurse manager, he performs dual roles, including supporting the nursing staff through mentorship and coaching, listening to concerns and providing counsel, and overseeing unit-based administrative functions such as financial operations, human resources, patient-centered care delivery, adherence to state and national regulatory provisions, and developing unit-level protocols. The interview was brief and focused on three profound questions:

1. What is the major challenge facing your organization?
2. What are the consequences of this challenge to institutional operations?
3. Does the organization have a collaborative culture that supports interdisciplinary solutions?

Issue Identification

While responding to the three interview questions, Mr. Johnson earmarked nursing staff shortage as the primary challenge compromising quality care delivery. He argues that his organization is susceptible to the increased demands for quality care emanating from demographic dynamics, changes in regulatory landscapes, the need to incorporate advanced technologies into institutional operations, and the prevalence of health conditions such as chronic diseases. According to the respondent, external and internal environments perpetrate nursing staff shortages. At the organizational level, factors like nurse turnover, increased workload, unfavorable working conditions such as workplace stress, and a lack of career development and staff empowerment mechanisms lead to nurse shortage (Dewanto & Wardhani, 2018). In the same breath, a lack of coordination between healthcare organizations and medical learning institutions, competition from private health institutions, and inadequate employment standards are among the external causes of nurse shortages.

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While answering the question about the effects of nurse shortage on institutional operations, Mr. Johnson indicated that understaffed departments are susceptible to adverse events and ramifications such as medication errors, nurse burnout, delayed care, high mortality and morbidity rates, workplace stress, and fragmented care delivery. Further, he argued that his organization has a supportive culture and implements conventional interventions for addressing staff shortages, including competency-based hiring and residency programs for new nurses. However, these measures are inadequate for coping with the problem of understaffed departments. Therefore, he recommended more Interdisciplinary and collaborative interventions for solving the patient safety issue.

Change Theories that Could Lead to an Interdisciplinary Solution

The organization must implement evidence-based, collaborative efforts to address internal factors that facilitate nurse shortage. According to Haddad & Toney-Butler (2022), interprofessional team interventions for preventing nurse shortage include introducing advanced technologies to support nursing informatics and motivate employees, empowerment through training and career development opportunities, and ensuring job satisfaction by eliminating aspects of uncivil workplace cultures. Although these interventions can improve talent retention and prevent nurse turnover, the organization should address the underlying factors compromising their implementation and sustenance. This consideration validates the rationale for incorporating a change management theory into strategies for tackling nurse shortage.

Although many change theories provide frameworks for change management, Kotter’s eight-step theory remains fundamental in facilitating contextualized quality improvement initiatives. According to Ravi et al. (2022), this model requires institutions to create a sense of urgency, form coalitions and partnerships, create shared visions, communicate visions to employees, remove barriers through empowerment, create short-term wins, build on change, and anchor new approaches in the institutional cultures. Carman et al. (2019) argue that these steps narrow down to three profound tenets of change management: creating a climate of change, engaging and enabling the whole organization, and implementing and sustaining change.

This change management theory enables organizations to initiate, implement, evaluate, and sustain change. Therefore, it can support interventions for addressing nurse shortages. The scholarly article by Ravi et al. (2022) and Carman et al. (2019) provide current, reliable, and authoritative information about the context of applying Kotter’s eight-step change theory in healthcare. However, the study by Carman et al. (2019) seems most credible because it summarizes all the eight steps of the change theory and offers contextualized insights.

Leadership Strategies that Could Lead to an Interdisciplinary Solution

Effective leadership is consistent with proper change initiation, implementation, evaluation, and sustenance. In the context of organizational-level strategies for addressing nurse shortage, it is essential to note that individual efforts are insufficient to address an issue of such clinical and economic magnitude. Therefore, interdisciplinary and multi-agency collaboration is an ideal strategy for initiating and implementing collective efforts.

Team leadership is a profound determinant of teams’ ability to address the issue of nurse shortage. Ree & Wiig (2019) argue that transformational leadership effectively drives change because it supports critical and creative thinking, encourages collaboration between leaders and followers, improves job demands, and facilitates interventions for reducing mental workload and other workplace stressors. In the same breath, Alkarabsheh et al. (2022) argue that transformational leaders motivate their followers to achieve their full potential in their performance by changing negative perceptions and creating a sense of direction. This leadership strategy has four profound components: idealized influence, inspirational leadership, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration.

Consequently, it enables leaders to demonstrate charismatic attributes and behaviors while encouraging creativity, team performance, and cohesion by addressing conflicts between team members. Although the studies by Ree & Wiig (2019) and Alkarabsheh et al. (2022) provide credible insights into the contribution of transformational leadership in facilitating change, the article by Alkarabsheh et al. (2022) seems more credible because it captures the four components of transformational leadership alongside providing more contextualized information on the topic.

Collaboration Approaches for Interdisciplinary Teams

Interdisciplinary teams developed to address the problem of nurse shortage should demonstrate characteristics of effective team performance. According to Dinh et al. (2020), characteristics of dynamic teams include trust, respect, and cohesion. In the same breath, effective communication and coordination are profound approaches for promoting team effectiveness and enhancing Interdisciplinary team activities. In this sense, ensuring timely sharing of information regarding the issue, collaboration in consensus decision-making, the anticipation of team members’ workloads, provision of mutual support, collective troubleshooting, and proper timing of events are vital. Buljac-Samardzic et al. (2020) argue that facilitating team communication through technology, monitoring team interactions, and incentivizing team efforts can foster collaboration and Interdisciplinary team functioning. The two scholarly articles discuss evidence-based collaborative approaches for improving Interdisciplinary team performance and functions. However, the article by Dinh et al. (2020) seems more credible because it provides a comprehensive analysis of Interdisciplinary teamwork processes, including inputs, mediators, and processes.

Conclusion

An interview with Mr. Johnson shed light on various challenges that face healthcare organizations. While the interviewee identified nurse shortage as an issue of concern in his organization, the institution should incorporate Kotter’s eight-step change theory and elements of transformational leadership to support Interdisciplinary team efforts for addressing the problem. Also, it is vital to ensure that the interdisciplinary teams encourage various collaboration approaches, including effective communication, coordination, conflict management, trust, respect, and consensus decision-making processes.

References

Alkarabsheh, O. H. M., Jaaffar, A. H., Wei Fong, P., Attallah Almaaitah, D. A., & Mohammad Alkharabsheh, Z. H. (2022). The relationship between leadership style and turnover intention of nurses in the public hospitals of Jordan. Cogent Business & Management, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2022.2064405

Buljac-Samardzic, M., Doekhie, K. D., & van Wijngaarden, J. D. H. (2020). Interventions to improve team effectiveness within health care: A systematic review of the past decade. Human Resources for Health, 18(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12960-019-0411-3

Carman, A. L., Vanderpool, R. C., Stradtman, L. R., & Edmiston, E. A. (2019). A change-management approach to closing care gaps in a federally qualified health center: A Rural Kentucky case study. Preventing Chronic Disease, 16(E105). https://doi.org/10.5888/pcd16.180589

Dewanto, A., & Wardhani, V. (2018). Nurse turnover and perceived causes and consequences: A preliminary study at private hospitals in Indonesia. BMC Nursing, 17(S2). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-018-0317-8

Dinh, J. V., Traylor, A. M., Kilcullen, M. P., Perez, J. A., Schweissing, E. J., Venkatesh, A., & Salas, E. (2019). Cross-Disciplinary care: A systematic review on teamwork processes in health care. Small Group Research, 51(1), 125–166. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496419872002

Haddad, L. M., & Toney-Butler, T. J. (2022). Nursing shortage. Stat Pearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493175/

Ravi, S., Patel, S. R., Laurence, S. K., Sebok-Syer, S. S., & Gharahbaghian, L. (2022). Kotter’s 8 stages of change: Implementation of clinical screening protocols for assessing patients for COVID-19 – a review of an academic medical center’s preparedness. BMJ Leader, leader. https://doi.org/10.1136/leader-2020-000379

Ree, E., & Wiig, S. (2019). Linking transformational leadership, patient safety culture and work engagement in-home care services. Nursing Open, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/nop2.386

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For this assessment, you will create a 2-4 page report on an interview you have conducted with a health care professional. You will identify an issue from the interview that could be improved with an interdisciplinary approach, and review best practices and evidence to address the issue.

As a baccalaureate-prepared nurse, your participation and leadership in interdisciplinary teams will be vital to the health outcomes for your patients and organization. One way to approach designing an improvement project is to use the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement describes it thus:

The Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle is shorthand for testing a change in the real work setting—by planning it, trying it, observing the results, and acting on what is learned. This is the scientific method adapted for action-oriented learning…Essentially, the PDSA cycle helps you test out change ideas on a smaller scale before evaluating the results and making adjustments before potentially launching into a somewhat larger scale project (n.d.).

You might also recognize that the PDSA cycle resembles the nursing process. The benefit of gaining experience with this model of project design is that it provides nurses with an opportunity to ideate and lead improvements. For this assessment, you will not be implementing all of the PDSA cycle. Instead, you are being asked to interview a health care professional of your choice to determine what kind of interdisciplinary problem he or she is experiencing or has experienced in the workplace. This interview, in Assessment 2, will inform the research that you will conduct to propose a plan for interdisciplinary collaboration in Assessment 3.

It would be an excellent choice to complete the PDSA Cycle activity prior to developing the report. The activity consists of four questions that create the opportunity to check your understanding of best practices related to each stage of the PDSA cycle. The information gained from completing this formative will promote your success with the Interview and Interdisciplinary Issue Identification report. This will take just a few minutes of your time and is not graded.

Reference
Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (n.d.). How to improve. http://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/HowtoImprove/default.aspx

Demonstration of Proficiency
Competency 2: Explain how interdisciplinary collaboration can be used to achieve desired patient and systems outcomes.
Summarize an interview focused on past or current issues at a health care organization.
Describe collaboration approaches from the literature that could be relevant in establishing or improving an interdisciplinary team to address an organizational issue.
Competency 3: Describe ways to incorporate evidence-based practice within an interdisciplinary team.
Identify an issue from an interview for which an evidence-based interdisciplinary approach would be appropriate.
Competency 4: Explain how change management theories and leadership strategies can enable interdisciplinary teams to achieve specific organizational goals.
Describe change theories and a leadership strategy that could help develop an interdisciplinary solution to an organizational issue.
Competency 5: Apply professional, scholarly, evidence-based communication strategies to impact patient, interdisciplinary team, and systems outcomes.
Organize content so ideas flow logically with smooth transitions; contains few errors in grammar/punctuation, word choice, and spelling.
Apply APA formatting to in-text citations and references, exhibiting nearly flawless adherence to APA format.
Professional Context
This assessment will introduce the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) Model to create change in an organization. By interviewing a colleague of your choice, you will begin gathering information about an interprofessional collaboration problem that your colleague is experiencing or has experienced. You will identify a change theory and leadership strategies to help solve this problem.

Scenario
This assessment is the first of three related assessments in which you will gather interview information (Assessment 2); design a proposal for interdisciplinary problem-solving, (Assessment 3); and report on how an interdisciplinary improvement plan could be implemented in a place of practice (Assessment 4). At the end of the course, your interviewee will have a proposal plan based on the PDSA cycle that he or she could present to stakeholders to address an interdisciplinary problem in the workplace.

For this assessment, you will need to interview a health care professional such as a fellow learner, nursing colleague, administrator, business partner, or another appropriate person who could provide you with sufficient information regarding an organizational problem that he or she is experiencing or has experienced, or an area where they are seeking improvements. Consult the Interview Guide [DOCX] for an outline of how to prepare and the types of information you will need to complete this project successfully.

Remember: this is just the first in a series of three assessments.

Instructions
For this assessment, you will report on the information that you collected in your interview, analyzing the interview data and identifying a past or current issue that would benefit from an interdisciplinary approach. This could be an issue that has not been addressed by an interdisciplinary approach or one that could benefit from improvements related to the interdisciplinary approach currently being used. You will discuss the interview strategy that you used to collect information. Your interview strategy should be supported by citations from the literature. Additionally, you will start laying the foundation for your Interdisciplinary Plan Proposal (Assessment 3) by researching potential change theories, leadership strategies, and collaboration approaches that could be relevant to issue you have identified. Please be certain to review the scoring guide to confirm specific required elements of this assessment. Note that there are differences between basic, proficient and distinguished scores.

When submitting your plan, use the Interview and Issue Identification Template [DOCX], which will help you to stay organized and concise. As you complete the template, make sure you use APA format for in-text citations for the evidence and best practices that are informing your plan, as well as for the reference list at the end.

Additionally, be sure to address the following, which corresponds to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. Please study the scoring guide carefully so you understand what is needed for a distinguished score.

Summarize an interview focused on past or current issues at a health care organization.
Identify an issue from an interview for which an evidence-based interdisciplinary approach would be appropriate.
Describe potential change theories and leadership strategies that could inform an interdisciplinary solution to an organizational issue.
Describe collaboration approaches from the literature that could facilitate establishing or improving an interdisciplinary team to address an organizational issue.
Communicate with writing that is clear, logically organized, and professional, with correct grammar and spelling, and using current APA style.
Additional Requirements
Length of submission: Use the provided template. Most submissions will be 2 to 4 pages in length. Be sure to include a reference page at the end of the plan.
Number of references: Cite a minimum of 3 sources of scholarly or professional evidence that support your central ideas. Resources should be no more than 5 years old.
APA formatting: Make sure that in-text citations and reference list follow current APA style.
Portfolio Prompt: Remember to save the final assessment to your ePortfolio so that you may refer to it as you complete the final Capstone course.

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• Interview Summary
  Summarize your interview in this section. Be sure to relate concise information about:
  •	the health care organization that was discussed in the interview.
  •	the interviewee’s role and duties.
  •	the relevant issues at the organization.
  •	any relevant comments on the actions taken by the organization or leadership previously and their effectiveness.
  •	the organizational culture related to collaboration.
  •	any relevant collaboration or interdisciplinary team experience you interviewee has had.
  The goal of this section is to convey what was discussed at the interview and identify an issue to pursue throughout the rest of this assessment (and future assessments in this course), as well as have enough information to relate theories, strategies, and approaches to the situation at the organization. 
  Issue Identification
  Identify the issue from the interview for which you consider an evidence-based interdisciplinary approach appropriate. Provide one or more specific reasons why an interdisciplinary approach would be appropriate for the issue.
  Change Theories That Could Lead to an Interdisciplinary Solution
  For this section, look to the literature and describe one or more change theories that would help to develop an interdisciplinary solution to the identified issue. Also, you should briefly note the relevance and credibility of the sources that you cite.
  Another way to think through this section is:
  •	What is the change theory?
  •	How could it help create an interdisciplinary solution?
  •	How relevant is the theory to the specific identified issue?
  •	How credible is the source?
  Leadership Strategies That Could Lead to an Interdisciplinary Solution
  This section is similar to the previous one, except you will be looking to the literature to help you describe one or more leadership strategy that would help you develop an interdisciplinary solution to the identified issue. Also, you should briefly note the relevance and credibility of the sources that you cite.
  Another way to think through this section is:
  •	What is the leadership strategy?
  •	How could it help create an interdisciplinary solution?
  •	How relevant is the strategy to the specific identified issue?
  •	How credible is the source?
  Collaboration Approaches for Interdisciplinary Teams
  Again, this section will be similar to the previous once, except that the focus will be on collaboration approaches. Depending on whether or not your interviewee’s organization uses interdisciplinary teams frequently, your focus in this section may be on how to establish interdisciplinary teams and a collaborative foundation or how to improve the collaboration within an already established teams. You should also briefly note the relevance and credibility of the sources that you cite.
  Another way to think through this section is:
  •	What is the leadership approach?
  •	How could it help establish or improve collaboration?
  •	How relevant is the approach to the specific identified issue?
  •	How credible is the source?