Collaboration and Leadership Reflection
It is important to note that interprofessional collaboration is comprised of a complex set of practices, which are based on communication, adherence to core responsibilities, and cooperative strategies. Nursing practice is unequivocally interconnected with other professions, where nursing professionals play a critical role in direct care provision for patients. Therefore, implementing the best-practice leadership strategies and interdisciplinary collaboration strategies is essential in order to avoid poor collaboration in an interdisciplinary environment.
Personal Experience
By reflecting on my own personal experience, I can identify one example where the result was an improved patient outcome. The involved parties included me, as a nursing professional, pharmacist, cardiologist, and physical therapist. The collaborative effort resulted in a positive outcome for the patient’s health condition and status, a patient who recently had heart failure. The rehabilitation process went well due to a combination of efforts by a wide range of professionals and improved collaboration due to patient-centered care. Although initially there were miscommunication problems between the physical therapist and pharmacist about the medications, these were quickly resolved by my and the cardiologist’s involvement. A more detailed understanding of the patient’s unique needs should have occurred to avoid such issues.
Vila Health
In the case of Vila Health activity, every member of the interprofessional team directs the blame at a different aspect of the electronic health records or EHR’s implementation. For example, Stephen, the administrator, blames corporate and adherence to low costs alongside the deal with a specific company. Elise Wang, the Director of Operations, states that it is a change management issue. Chad Cook, the IT manager, claims that the team was poorly managed by Josh from corporate, and the latter individual is also blamed by Shonda McCrae, the registered nurse or RN. Although Lisa Cotrone, LPN, focuses on Shonda, Nora Church, RN, attributes the problem to management and IT. The main way the interdisciplinary team did not collaborate effectively was by having no unified leadership and invading the professional expertise areas of another specialty. For example, one of the biggest mistakes was Josh telling IT specialists what to do while he was not an IT professional.
Similarly, nurses were forced to use and ‘figure the system out on their own despite being provided a dysfunctional EHR, and Josh was also the key figure in this regard. As a result of financial implications, the attempt to save on EHR systems and IT specialists led to a poorly working technology, which worsened nurses’ quality of care and cost the organization its productivity. For the human resources, it is evident that IT specialists were the most valuable resource in this endeavor, and the lack of proper leadership from Josh led to this outcome. According to Lewin’s model of change, knowledge sharing is critical to ensure better collaboration and efficient management, but the case shows the opposite, where knowledge was contained in each profession (Hussain et al., 2018). The negative implication for the entire organization is the integration of a hindrance rather than something which is supposed to increase efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of care.
Leadership Strategy
The identified leadership strategy is the Person-Centered Situational Leadership Framework or PCSLF, which would improve the team’s ability to achieve its goals. PCSLF “captures seven core attributes of the leader … connecting with the other person in an instant; intentionally enthusing the other person to act … and unifying through collaboration, appreciation, and trust” (Lynch et al., 2017, p. 427). It is evident that Josh from corporate was not connecting with the IT department, and he did the opposite of enthusing them to act to the point where IT employees did the bare minimum. In addition, the entire interdisciplinary team lacks any form of trust, appreciation, and collaboration. Therefore, PCSLF and its seven constituents and core elements will comprise the strategy.
The first step is to put the essence of being, which would establish the groundwork for the entire leadership process. It is stated that “the situational leader experiences an arising awareness and a witnessing of their emotions as they relate with the other person in the moment” (Lynch et al., 2017, p. 431). The core leadership figure in the case was Josh, who was sent from the corporate to ensure the correct implementation of EHR. Although Stephen is an administrator, he had no impact on the managerial process, and his concerns were not addressed by the corporate, which is why Josh became the default leader. Josh should have been more aware of the emotions experienced by the interdisciplinary team, which clearly and unanimously expressed their dislike of how the change was handled.
The second step of the PCSLF strategy is calibrating the vision with action. The vision of any healthcare facility is to provide high-quality care, and the organization was heavily interested in implementing a specific EHR with lower costs. The only measure under such conditions is to make the best use of already existing financial and human resources. It is reported that “the uncovering of an authentic vision of person-centeredness is dependent on the situational leader giving the team and the residents the space and presence to reflect on” (Lynch et al., 2017, p. 432). In other words, Josh should have realized the vision with its constraints, where he should have focused on providing reasonable time and voice for the IT specialists.
The third step of the PCSLF framework is to balance person-centeredness with compliance. It is stated that the critical factor is “balancing concern for compliance with concern for person-centeredness” (Lynch et al., 2017, p. 427). Josh should have understood that he was demanding an excessive amount of compliance from the IT department without any form of person-centeredness on their concerns and needs. He should have ensured that there was a way for the team to operate productively under his supervision.
The fourth step revolves around connection within the framework’s interaction. PCSLF’s leader “‘models the way’ by demonstrating an alert stillness in their interaction with the other person, where judgment is suspended in order to gain a deep understanding of what the other person is experiencing” (Lynch et al., 2017, p. 435). In other words, Josh should have suspended his judgment of the IT department being unproductive. He should have understood that they were working with limited resources and a small number of employees. In addition, Josh should have connected with the department at a closer level rather than simply forcing them to do the process in accordance with his specific instructions, which were not based on his EHR integration expertise.
The fifth step is invoking enthusiasm to act among the team members. Josh clearly discouraged the team from acting collaboratively, especially with regard to the IT professionals. The sixth and seventh steps are “listening to the other person with the heart; and unifying through collaboration, appreciation and trust” (Lynch et al., 2017, p. 427). These are derivatives of his ineffective leadership style, which emerged as a result of being unaware of constraints and available resources.
Interdisciplinary Collaboration Strategy
The identified best-practice interdisciplinary collaboration strategy is empowerment based on the grounded theory. The strategic approach is seeking connectivity, which explains “how nurses and their managers exercised power, and how seeking connectivity either hindered or fostered nurses’ ability to feel empowered in the work setting” (Udod & Racine, 2017, p. 5). In other words, it applies to communication and its impact on the patient, interdisciplinary team, and systems outcomes. The case presents an interprofessional team with a high level of disconnect from each other. The latter is evidenced by the previously mentioned targets of blame for the failure of EHR implementation, where one directs it towards corporate, whereas others claim that it is the EHR system itself. Therefore, empowerment would have solved the issues and ensured an increased level of cooperation by promoting better connectivity among each professional group.
Under the empowerment framework of collaboration, power is not exercised solely by the individual on top but rather by all team members. The latter creates a condition where a failure to assess, understand or correct a system flaw is immediately addressed by other team members. For example, if a leader fails to consider one important factor, which also slips through the attention of IT specialists, empowered nurses will be able to spot the problem and inform the entire interdisciplinary team. In other words, nurses no longer become powerful followers of orders from the top but rather an additional layer of checkpoints. The empowerment strategy of collaboration is a multilayered framework of various professions that hold similar levels of power in directing change. As a result, the impact of empowerment on patients and system outcomes is massive. No issue reaches the patients or damages the entire system because it is quickly ‘caught’ during the implementation process by every member of the interprofessional team.
References
Hussain, S. T., Lei, S., Akram, T., Haider, M. J., Hussain, S. H., & Ali, M. (2018). Kurt Lewin’s change model: A critical review of the role of leadership and employee involvement in organizational change.Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 3(3), 123–127. Web.
Lynch, B. M., McCance, T., McCormack, B., & Brown, D. (2017). The development of the Person-centered situational leadership framework: Revealing the being of person-centeredness in nursing homes.Journal of Clinical Nursing, 27(1-2), 427–440. Web.
Udod, S. A., & Racine, L. (2017). Empirical and pragmatic adequacy of grounded theory: Advancing nurse empowerment theory for nurses’ practice.Journal of Clinical Nursing, 26(23-24), 5224–5231. Web.