An interdisciplinary plan proposal is a document that is used to solve problems of a health care facility, with the involvement of health care practitioners of various departments to enhance organizational work interdependence. Thus, the present plan proposal is a perfect solution to enhance the health of patients in healthcare. This proposal will therefore focus on providing an evidence-based approach that can be used in an attempt to minimize the communication gap that exists at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. It is to enhance the quality of the care being delivered by enhancing the clinic’s operations and technology. It can be done by enhancing communication and cooperation at the workplace through the introduction of change theories and leadership approaches.
Objective
To implement a structured interdisciplinary communication protocol using regular team huddles and digital collaboration tools with the goal of enhancing patient outcomes and reducing nurse workload. If achieved, this objective will improve organizational outcomes by ensuring more coordinated and effective patient care, thereby reducing medical errors, enhancing patient safety, and increasing overall patient satisfaction.
Frequent team meetings and interdisciplinary collaboration will reduce the risk of medical errors and other relatable incidents thereby improving the health outcomes and safety of the patients at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Increased communication among team members along with proposed protocols will aid in distributing the tasks evenly among staff members. Thus, it will help to clarify the role of each individual, leading to reduced staff burden. In this way, nurses will be more efficient in their work and will feel more satisfied.
Improved communication channels will increase the work efficiency of the hospital by reducing patient stays and readmissions. This will cut the cost of usable resources for the hospital thus creating more work opportunities for the staff.
This objective will solve the lack of communication among healthcare workers by organizing daily team briefings and incorporating technology to ensure integral updates are conveyed synchronously. These measures will help to make sure that all the team members are equally informed about the status of the patient and the plan for his or her treatment so that there are no cases of confusion between the team members. It will ensure that there is order in the interaction between the healthcare professionals and will also ensure that there is order in the flow of information between the various stakeholders hence increasing the coordination of the delivery of healthcare services (Gonçalves-Bradley et al., 2020).
Standard communication protocols will be helpful in setting norms regarding how professionals should communicate to make sure that all of them adhere to the same standards.
The standardization of these terms will decrease uncertainty, increase understanding, and create a culture of clear and effective communication, which, in turn, will improve collaborations and the quality of patient care (Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, 2021).
The strategies to enhance communication will enhance staff retention by making the working environment more supportive and less stressful hence reducing burnout and its associated effects such as job dissatisfaction. More effective communication will result in improved coordination of patient care, thus decreasing the number and severity of medical mistakes and hence increasing the patients’ satisfaction levels and the staff’s loyalty to the organization (Seyffert et al., 2024).
The plan implementation will be interdisciplinary and sustainable over time since there will be ongoing training sessions, feedback mechanisms, and evaluation of the plan’s effectiveness. The plan will remain relevant and responsive to the needs of the organization by creating sustained expectations from the leadership and integrating the protocols into one’s regular activities (Bendowska & Baum, 2023).
The methods mentioned below can be used to determine success.
• Assess the impact of communication interventions on patients to determine the outcomes achieved. Because primarily the patients suffer from the absence of proper communication among the care providers. Thus, it can be a valued means to define success (Sharkiya, 2023).
• The second method is to set up a feedback program that will allow healthcare providers and patients to express their experiences and identify the missing components. This may assist in the process of defining what aspects require change. In addition, it will also help make the environment conducive for the staff to work and be one team by identifying constraints (Burgess et al., 2020).
• Another way to measure success is to introduce performance metrics. Monitor the particular metrics to obtain the details regarding the communication issues, response, and resolution. In this way, progress can be analyzed over the time period as the changes are clearly seen and can be measured more easily (Kaplan et al., 2021).
• Analyze the performance parameters like the time taken to attend to patients, the number of errors made, and patients’ satisfaction levels when the interdisciplinary approach has been adopted and when it has not (Godley & Jenkins, 2019). The changes in these metrics over the past 6 months would be a clear signal of the program’s success.
To systematically approach the issue of the communication gap at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and develop an interdisciplinary plan based on the evidence, the following change management model should be employed: Lewin’s Change Management Model and the type of leadership that should be used in this case is transformational leadership.
This is a three-phase model that gives a clear outline of how change is to be managed in an organization. The first of them is known as “unfreezing” – creating a need for change and making people and organizations ready for it. If addressing communication challenges among the interdisciplinary teams in Johns Hopkins Hospital was the goal in this phase, then it would
involve identifying the existing barriers to communication and sensitizing the staff to the potential enhancement in gains resulting from interdisciplinary collaboration. This notion leads to the next steps as it prepares the people for change and makes them expect change hence creating an impression that change is the order of the day. An interdisciplinary solution is made possible by Lewin’s Change Management Model, which guides the “Changing” stage when real changes are put into practice. To improve communication skills across various healthcare specializations, this stage focuses on establishing new communication protocols, encouraging collaborative practices, and offering training sessions. However, in the third stage of “Refreezing”, the implemented changes are solidified (Barrow et al., 2020).
Lewin’s Change Management Model can be incorporated at the Johns Hopkins Hospital to ensure buy-in by marking people as the most valuable resource. It is a step-by-step approach to address the communication challenges and ensure interdisciplinary teams adopt the project plan. In the “Unfreezing” phase, it is possible for the hospital to organize workshops or meetings where the participants can discuss the existing communication challenges and their consequences for patients and the workload of nurses. This will create awareness and develop an understanding in the staff on the need to change from the current system. During the “Changing” phase it is possible to implement new rules regarding the communication between the departments, as well as the organization of meetings and training. In the end, during the “Refreezing” phase, it is possible to support these changes and ensure that the new protocols become the new norms within the hospital by incorporating them into the hospital policies and implementing support and feedback mechanisms. This will ensure that the improvements made are well grounded and take root, thus achieving better collaboration, less confusion, and therefore better patient care, in
line with the Johns Hopkins Hospital organizational culture that is all for collaboration but plagued by poor communication.
One leadership approach that is widely known and used for resolving communication barriers between interdisciplinary healthcare teams is transformational leadership. This leadership approach focuses on developing an appealing vision and setting concrete objectives to engage and compel healthcare practitioners. Healing, as a strategy, makes team members feel that they are part of something bigger than themselves; leaders who use this technique assist the team in achieving organizational goals, for instance, increasing interprofessional collaboration to advance the quality of care for patients. Transformational leaders encourage team members to engage and be committed when it comes to addressing the barriers to communication by acknowledging the importance of everyone getting involved (Bornman & Louw, 2023).
In the context of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, the application of transformational leadership can foster buy-in to receive commitment from the multi-professional teams by developing a clear and inspiring vision that reflects the need for enhanced communication and cooperation among the teams. To involve healthcare practitioners, leaders can focus on the common objective of improving patient care and consider the value that every team member brings. Through the exercise of commitment and involvement, transformational leaders can help make a team appreciate the new changes in communication and implement all aspects of the project plan.
The interdisciplinary collaboration approach means the integration of interrelated healthcare professionals aiming at enhancing the health outcomes of the patients. The members
of the interdisciplinary team at Johns Hopkins Hospital include nurses, physicians, pharmacists, and healthcare administrators. Nurses are on the frontline providing basic care to the patients as they are their primary caregivers. They have an improved understanding of the needs and desires of the patients because they spend more time with the patients than the other healthcare providers. Physicians diagnose and treat the disease. Physicians are also key stakeholders that need to be acknowledged to identify the areas that need to be improved to reduce the barriers to delivering care. Pharmacists are very much engaged in the use and administration of medications as well as imparting knowledge to the clients. They do this by persuading people about change, so they can go about their business. They are in charge of managing an organization and are also tasked with the responsibility of implementing changes such as new policies and procedures in organizations (Bendowska & Baum, 2023).
Interdisciplinary collaboration and teamwork that will be most effective in the context of the interdisciplinary team at Johns Hopkins Hospital are Interdisciplinary Conferences, Interdisciplinary Communication, and Coordinated Care. The frequent meetings will facilitate constant discussions and delegation of decision making will draw on the strength of multidisciplinary knowledge to enhance the patients’ status. The integrated care pathways will also lead to the elimination of communication gaps between departments and consequently improve the flow of care (Bendowska & Baum, 2023).
This collaboration approach is highly relevant to the needs of the Johns Hopkins team because it tackles the current communication issues. This makes sure all the disciplines are involved, well-coordinated, and committed, making the process successful in enhancing patients’ care and decreasing the pressure on nurses. The alignment will also help foster the development of a cohesive team within the organization thus improving health care delivery to patients.
For the plan proposal at Johns Hopkins Hospital, the staffing requirements include having a project manager who will be solely assigned to oversee the plan’s implementation and a team of communication experts who will be undertaking the training. Also, staff in various departments that are already in the establishment will have to schedule time for interdisciplinary meetings.
The plan proposal entails physical facilities that will need to have audiovisual equipment for communications and training purposes. These are already present in the hospital so there is little investment required here, mainly for repair and to coordinate the use of the facilities. If something more is required, for example, new software for encrypted communication, the amount can be approximately $ 20,000. Additionally, acquiring new training materials and resources such as manuals and interactive training modules, may cost an additional $ 5000 to guarantee comprehensive staff training and participation (Haleem et al., 2021).
To ensure effective communication and to provide comprehensive care to the patient, all departments and records should be available. Thus, the current systems in the hospital do not have direct costs for this access. However, protecting data privacy and security could cost a little more money which could be in the range of $10000 to meet the compliance and IT needs. The use of periodic audits and updates on security measures will be required to ensure compliance with the legal requirements to protect the patient’s information and avoid legal and financial consequences in the future.
A total of $150, 000 will be required for the implementation of the plan proposal in terms of financial budget. This includes $80 000 for personnel expenses (project manager and communication specialists), $ 20 000 for equipment and software upgrades, $50 000 for training
of employees and regular staff meetings. Furthermore, $10,000 set aside for contingencies provides room for maneuvering to counter any other costs that may occur while implementing the project. Thus, this budget guarantees exhaustive and continuous support for the project, which would help the hospital resolve the problem of communication gaps in a lasting manner.
If the plan is unsuccessful then communication barriers will remain which results in more complications and possible mistakes in patient care. This may lead to additional expenses through longer hospital stays, more frequent readmission, and legal repercussions for medical mistakes. Also, staff fatigue and attrition can increase, which will also lead to a loss of more resources for the hospital. The financial implications in the long run could be devastating as reputation, patient trust, and staff morale may be at stake; thus, such issues should be tended to with immediate and permanent solutions.
In conclusion, the elimination of communication barriers in the interdisciplinary context of the Johns Hopkins Hospital is an important goal that will improve the quality of care for patients and relieve staff stress. In particular, the decision-makers at the hospital should focus on the application of Lewin’s Change Management Model and transformational leadership to secure the staff’s collaboration and support. The total implementation cost of $150,000 proposed here will include staffing, equipment, and training to guarantee a thorough plan. The inability to implement this plan may lead to future consequences such as medical misadventures, higher rates of readmission, and staff fatigue. This is why it is critical to continue investing in this initiative to enhance the general healthcare provision and keep up the hospital’s quality.
Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. (2021). Communicating for safety standard. Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. https://www.safetyandquality.gov.au/standards/nsqhs-standards/communicating-safety-standard
Barrow, J. M., Annamaraju, P., & Toney-Butler, T. J. (2020). Change Management. PubMed; StatPearls Publishing. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29083813/
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NURS FPX 4010 Assessment 3
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