M48CPD : Clinical Leadership and Professional Relationship : Patients’

Scenario A recent state-wide quality improvement project has shown that a fully electronic medication system improves the safety of medication administration. In order to share this knowledge, the state organisation has shared the results on a quality improvement website. The two hundred bed hospital where you work has recently had some medication critical incidents. These critical incidentsoccurinthecontextofageneralincreaseofminormedicationerrorsoverthelastthreeyears. Thehospital’s most senior Nurse/ Midwifery Leader has reviewed the information on the state’s quality improvement website. The Nurse/ Midwifery Leader calls the Nurse/ Midwifery Unit Managers for a meeting and advises of the general increase in medication errors and that there is an expectation that all wards will have adopted the fully electronic medication system within six months.

The electronic medication system is freely available from the government and can be installed directly onto the ward computers. Discuss how an e?ective Nurse/ Midwifery Unit Manager would lead this change to address this patient safety issue. This essay will need to : provide reasons to adopt the fully electronic medication system use Lewin’s model to outline a plan of change that includes milestones and timeframes choose and apply a leadership style to the plan of change. Critically evaluate the choice and compare with at least one other leadership style describe two aspects of potential resistance and discuss how the resistance might be addressed.

Answer: 

Effective healthcare is an important issue that needs proper leadership and guidance in order to ensure patients’ health and safety. The progress in technology helps to reduce human error in organisations. In this regard, the installation of the Electronic medication management system (EMM) systems in the Australian healthcare organisations can be considered as a benevolent step taken by the government. It requires proper change management plan and in-depth understanding before going for a drastic transformation. Henceforth, the purpose of this report is to conduct a detailed research on an organisation and evaluate the plan and consequences of implementing the EMM system. Moreover, the report also encompasses a change management model, that is, Lewin’s model and highlights a leadership style in the name of transformational leadership for the success of the change and identified the potential resistances while implementing EMM system.

It can be a seen that the number of nurses is not adequate in hospitals to curb down the pressure (Reale et al., 2016). Therefore, the new system will enable the hospital staff to take proper care of their patients and reduce error in their practice. The present case scenario stated that, the hospital has 200 beds but the number of nurses are limited. As a result of that it becomes a huge pressure on the nurses to deal with the critical conditions.

The Australian government is keen to deliver the EMM system free of cost and installed directly onto the ward computers. This facility is very promising for the hospitals where people are neglected due to lack of staff or other management issues (Volpi et al., 2015). Therefore, it will be beneficial for the hospital to take the privileges provided by the government in the form of giving the EMM system free of costs and free of any instalment charges.

For the change in the medication system it requires a change management plan and the Lewin’s change management plan is the best way to make it successful. As per the Lewin’s change management plan there are three stages in the form of unfreeze, change and refreeze (Manchester et al., 2014).

Before going to take necessary steps to implement a change, it is important for the nurse or midwifery manager to inform the nurses about the need for a change (Mahmood et al., 2017). In this context, the importance of the EMM system has to be mentioned and the impact of the EMM system also to be addressed. This process will take 4 days to finish its part. After involving the nurses in the change process the change process can be initiated. In this process, the installation of the EMM systems in the medication and other healthcare facilities will be occurred. The role of the managers is to supervise the entire process and keep a track of every change (Bejinariu et al., 2017). The change stage will take 2 days to complete the process. The refreeze stage is associated with the outcome of the change. As the purpose of this change is to create better workplace environment with more effective and accurate framework therefore it is advisable to make proper adjustments and carry out an internal evaluation of the change system (Cummings, Bridgman & Brown, 2016). The refreeze stage takes 1 month to assess and evaluate the efficacy of the new change.

The change process is certainly requires a leader to guide the process to success. In this regard, there are a number of leadership styles in the form of transformational, transactional and the charismatic leadership that can be beneficial for the organisation while installing the new EMM system. However, the transformational leadership will be the best option for the healthcare organisation. According to McCleskey (2014) transformational leadership can be defined as the leadership style that enhances relationship building with the followers or other employees by continuous rapport, inspiration and engagement. Therefore, in this case the leader in terms of the manager of the nurses will encourage the medical staffs to support the installing process of the EMM system. Moreover, it is also the responsibility of the leader to let them inform about the importance and significance of the EMM system (Tepper et al., 2018). In case of the installation of the new EMM system, it is pertinent to encourage and involve the nurses in the change process so that they will get acknowledged with different aspects of the EMM systems (Qu, Janssen & Shi, 2015).

In course of the discussion, it can be argued that the transactional leadership can also be an effective framework for this new development. However, there are certain disparities between the transactional leadership and the transformational leadership. The transformational leadership puts focus on changing the system in needs. On the other hand, the transactional system likes to perform within the given situation. Breevaart et al. (2014) stated that the transactional leadership is keener to solving the challenges in the known situation whether transformational leadership keeps looking for new ways of transformation. Moreover, transactional leaders minimise the variation of the organisation that is not fit with the change process in the healthcare institute (McCleskey, 2014). It requires a changing atmosphere so that the employees are also get involved in the process and usher success for the organisation. In relation to the case, the transformational leadership will highlight the benefits of the EMM system ant first and incorporated all the nurses and medical staffs in the discussion so they can also ventilate their perception regarding the change. Moreover, it is also important to presume that after the discussion the manager will take necessary steps to implement the change and installing the EMM system as soon as he can.

There are two resistance that can be seen in case of implementing the EMM system. Moreover, this resistance can be mitigate with the proper guidance of the leader. The EMM system develops a total facility of electronic monitoring system for patient care and committed to the reduction of sensitive error in treatment. However, it becomes a stigma that all the electronic devices try to reduce human efforts and cause unemployment (Lommerud, Straume & Vagstad, 2018). The same anxiety encircles around this organisations where some of the medical staff think that the implementation of the EMM system will cost their profession and therefore, they are intended to protest against such change (Alesina, Battisti & Zeira, 2018). However, this issue can be sorted out by understanding the true purpose of the installation. In this case, the manager will brief them the purpose of the new change and convince them to understand that the hospital or the new change plan have no intention to terminate the employees rather it has a benevolent approach to reduce overstress among the nurses.

Another resistance can be identified in terms of changing the daily schedule. Many of the nurses are complained about their issues if there will be any changes in the fixed routines (Kelly et al., 2014). The management keeps focus on it. Nevertheless, the manager of the hospital assures to acknowledge that all the efforts are taken for the benefits of the nurses and their flexible time schedule will not be altered entirely.

The report tried to point out the significance and role of leadership in healthcare during the process of change management. In fact, the role of the leaders was to ensure the safety and proper care to the patients. Hence, lewin’s change model and transformational leadership were included in the discussion. However, Fear of employment and change in daily schedule are the two possible resistance in this context.  Therefore, it can be concluded that the report conducted a thorough analysis and successfully portrayed every aspects of change management in an organisation.

Reference:

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