The implementation of changes has many challenges that may be caused by the project’s costs, stakeholders’ attitudes, and other factors. Thus, it is vital to assess possible impediments to the plan in order to assess the risks and prevent them from occurring. In the case of the practice problem such as the incidence of pressure ulcers, the issues can involve workers’ lack of initiative and knowledge. Other problems may arise due to insufficient funding and the lack of support from higher management. To implement the solution of preventing bedsores with the help of nursing education, scheduled position change, and standardized assessments, the unit should overcome many challenges.
Proposed Action Steps and Challenges
One of the suggested steps includes nursing education about the risks, incidence rates, and prevention strategies for pressure ulcers. Here, the staff of the unit should be taught how to evaluate patients’ skin condition on admission and following check-ups. This activity can also be used for motivating the workers to participate in the new project. The main challenge that may arise during this phase is the failure to engage nurses in training. Nurses act as one of the major stakeholder groups for this intervention.
They provide care for patients; thus, their lack of involvement directly affects the success of the improvement process. To be effective, nursing education should be interesting, interactive, and based on previous experience. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ, n.d.) provide multiple questionnaires that can assist the program’s leaders in assessing nurses’ knowledge. Other resources include print materials with the latest evidence-based practices and visual aids for nurses to remember about the new activities. Another significant resource is time – the staff should have enough time during the workday to learn and perform new tasks.
A nursing leader plays a vital role in inspiring other nurses and guiding them through new processes. Soban, Kim, Yuan, and Miltner (2017) find that the role of the nurse leader in the introduction of a new strategy is significant as this professional can organize other members and act as a bridge between specialists. Apart from education support, nurse leaders can help with implementing scheduled check-ups of patients who are at risk of pressure ulcers.
The documents of such patients should be marked with a specific symbol that shows the stage of the pressure ulcer or its probability. Nurses should be compliant with visiting such patients and moving them or warning them against sitting for more than 2 hours (AHRQ, n.d.; Sving, Högman, Mamhidir, & Gunningberg, 2016). Here, nurses and patients may show non-compliance with adhering to new activities (Dealey et al., 2015). These stakeholders should understand that pressure ulcers constitute a dangerous issue that leads to serious consequences for patients’ health.
Conclusion
The primary resources that are needed for all interventions include print materials, visual aids, multimedia files, and time. The resources are cost-effective because their successful use leads to the improvement of patient care. Subsequently, as the unit will have better patient outcomes, it will also receive more financial support and recognition. Therefore, all stakeholders, including nurses, and patients, and the hospital will benefit from the introduce quality improvement program.
The intangible resource of time is especially valuable as nurses in hospitals are often overburdened with their duties. Therefore, the ability to allocate some hours for learning procedures may be met with pushback from workers. This challenge requires additional strategizing from the project’s development team that should create an educational plan that will not limit nurses’ ability to care for patients.
References
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (n.d.). Preventing pressure ulcers in hospitals: A Toolkit – Section 7, tools and resources. Web.
Dealey, C., Brindle, C. T., Black, J., Alves, P., Santamaria, N., Call, E., & Clark, M. (2015). Challenges in pressure ulcer prevention. International Wound Journal, 12(3), 309-312.
Soban, L. M., Kim, L., Yuan, A. H., & Miltner, R. S. (2017). Organisational strategies to implement hospital pressure ulcer prevention programmes: Findings from a national survey. Journal of Nursing Management, 25(6), 457-467.
Sving, E., Högman, M., Mamhidir, A. G., & Gunningberg, L. (2016). Getting evidence-based pressure ulcer prevention into practice: A multi-faceted unit-tailored intervention in a hospital setting. International Wound Journal, 13(5), 645-654.