Interview Summary
I have chosen to interview a registered nurse working in the ICU department of a local clinic. She is a 34-year-old female, and her position involves interacting with patients, assessing their vital signs, fulfilling clinicians’ orders, and providing patients with prescribed medications. The interviewed nurse called low hand hygiene (HH) compliance the most serious issue that currently exists in her organization, because it leads to the transmission of germs, including antibiotic-resistant microorganisms.
According to the interviewee, the organization’s leadership has implemented several measures to address this issue, such as placing HH reminders close to the sinks and dispensers, which was not effective. The nurse has expressed concerns about the leadership’s insufficient involvement into the problem-solving process. For instance, many sinks and dispensers are either currently not working or are inconveniently placed, which negates the effect of the reminders. During the interview, it has also been noted that there is not enough interdisciplinary collaboration among the organization’s workers. The nurse has reported having little experience of being involved in interdisciplinary teamwork. She appreciated the experience, but also claimed that such initiatives are quite rare in her organization.
Issue Identification
Hospital-acquired diseases are commonly considered to be a major mortality and morbidity cause. In turn, HH compliance has been proved to be essential to prevent the spread of infections. (Gould et al., 2017). Although all health workers realize the scope of the problem and the importance of HH, compliance remains low in a large number of facilities across the country, and the Interviewee’s organization is one of them.
Change Theories That Could Lead to an Interdisciplinary Solution
One change theory that could be used is the PDSA model, which will allow creating a step-by-step plan for the improvements. This model will help to provide an interdisciplinary solution by implementing a cooperative “trial-and-learning” method and evaluating changes in an interactive and time-efficient manner (Gould et al., 2017). Another theory is Lewin’s three-step model, consisting of unfreezing, changing, and refreezing, which helps to gain a detailed understanding of the different stages of the change (Burnes, 2019). These theories and the sources used here to discuss them are widely applied in healthcare research, which ensures their credibility. It can also be argued that the theories are highly relevant to the identified issue because they allow creating a comprehensive approach that involves all parts and aspects of the work environment.
Leadership Strategies That Could Lead to an Interdisciplinary Solution
The leadership strategies that could be used are altering the interdisciplinary team to reflect the desired changes and promoting the culture of interprofessional transformations (Health Stream, 2021). These are likely to lead to an interdisciplinary solution by creating a constant focus on teamwork approaches, which will encourage health workers to follow the established protocols and practices. The strategies are relevant to this case, because the issue is partly caused by negligence among workers. Altering the teams and promoting transformations will therefore increase their awareness of the problem. The source used to select these strategies seems credible, because it was published by HealthStream, a health company that develops medical software and cooperates with health professionals from all over the world.
Collaboration Approaches That Could Lead to an Interdisciplinary Solution
The collaboration approach that could be used is involving the specific abilities and skills of all team members, exploring and combining their inputs. According to Dellafiore et al. (2019), this change in health professionals’ attitudes results in improved collaboration among them and the overall work culture. As mentioned above, the problem is partly caused by the lack of common vision and focus; therefore, this relevance of this solution is undeniable. The source used is credible and reliable, since it was published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.
References
Burnes, B. (2019). The origins of Lewin’s three-step model of change. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 56(1), 32-59.
Dellafiore, F., Caruso, R., Conte, G., Grugnetti, A. M., Bellani, S., & Arrigoni, C. (2019). Individual-level determinants of interprofessional team collaboration in healthcare. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 33(6), 762-767.
Gould, D. J., Moralejo, D., Drey, N., Chudleigh, J. H., & Taljaard, M. (2017). Interventions to improve hand hygiene compliance in patient care. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 17(9).
Health Stream. (2021). Top 5 leadership strategies to implement change in healthcare.