Capella FPX 4005 Assessment 2

This paper investigates an interview with a healthcare professional to identify an issue in an organization that would benefit from an interdisciplinary solution. The report summarizes the interview findings, change theories, leadership strategies, and approaches to collaborating to solve the problem.

Interview Summary 

The interviewee is a charge nurse with over five years of experience supervising nursing staff, liaison between departments, patient coordination, and working at the St. Michael’s Medical Center, an acute care facility focusing on emergency medicine, surgery, and chronic disease management. The interview focused on communication delays between nursing staff and physicians during emergencies. Specifically, they manifested in challenges during patient handovers and critical care interventions. Previous attempts to tackle this problem have included using a standardized handoff tool, but adherence was inconsistent.

Staff training and communication workshops were introduced; however, the sustainability of improvements was difficult. Though the organization has a supportive culture, the same staff sometimes work independently from each other, leveraging the specific expertise of professionals in separate disciplines, which sometimes results in fragmentation. The interviewee highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in improving patient outcomes and pointed out that a stronger communication framework and engagement strategy are needed to facilitate consistent teamwork.

The interview used open-ended questions to gather entire information by encouraging more sufficient responses and letting the conversation naturally follow the track (Slade & Sergent, 2023). The interview was semi-structured and guided to queries with the flexibility to explore emerging topics. Paraphrasing and clarifying were applied as active listening techniques to validate understanding and encourage elaboration of key points (Slade & Sergent, 2023). This gave me deeper insights into organizational culture, communication problems, and interdisciplinary experiences. Furthermore, contextual prompts were used to identify successful and unsuccessful organizational strategies. The interview ended with a summary to ensure the collected information was correct and let the interviewee share other points of view or thoughts.  

Issue Identification 

A significant problem in the interview was the communication breakdown between nurses and physicians during handover and critical care situations. Sometimes, these communication gaps cause care delays, confusion, and patient safety risks. An evidence-based interdisciplinary approach is appropriate because it allows multiple healthcare professionals to collaborate and assume responsibility for improving communication among each other and between healthcare professionals and patients, aiming to make healthcare coordination efficient and improve patient outcomes (Simons et al., 2022).

A multi-disciplinary team engagement will be involved in integrating variations to have standardized communication tools like structured handoff protocols. Research has demonstrated that staff can be trained in teamwork to improve communication among staff and boost trust in their partners (Eva et al., 2024). Also, interdisciplinary methods encourage continuous feedback and innovation, leading to sustainable improvements. By developing a collaborative environment, mutual respect, and a culture of collaboration, the team can foster a more cohesive and communicative environment that facilitates safe, high-quality care delivery.

Change Theory and an Interdisciplinary Solution

Kurt Lewin’s theory is credible in healthcare as it is simple and adaptable to organizational change. It includes the stages of unfreezing, changing, and refreezing (Smith et al., 2022). The theory can be applied to tackle communication challenges as follows: the ‘unfreezing’ stage involves drawing on the gaps in communication and melting resistance with an awareness of the impact of patient outcomes. At this “changing” stage, interdisciplinary interventions, such as structured communication protocols (e.g., SBAR) and joint training sessions, are implemented.

The ‘refreezing’ phase emphasizes reinforcing the new communication practices through continuous monitoring, feedback, and leadership support. This credible source of peer-reviewed literature shows the theory’s effectiveness in facilitating change. The resource provides evidence-based points on successfully applying the change management frameworks using an interdisciplinary collaboration and transformation model for sustainable improvements (Smith et al., 2022). 

Leadership Strategy and an Interdisciplinary Solution

Transformational leadership is an effective strategy to create interdisciplinary solutions to communication breakdowns between nurses and physicians. This leadership helps team members achieve a common goal with innovation and growth. Open communication, mentorship, and trust building across departments are essential for transformational leaders to encourage teamwork and information sharing (Jankelová & Joniaková, 2021).

Transformational leaders can also model desired behaviors and create models that a staff will follow by supporting and using standardized handoff protocols. In addition, they help with training and keeping up with progress. This peer-reviewed article validated this approach, which shows how it improves interdisciplinary collaboration and patient care outcomes (Jankelová & Joniaková, 2021). These sources’ evidence-based findings add to the credibility of practical strategies healthcare organizations can take to drive long-term, meaningful change.

Collaboration Approach for Interdisciplinary Teams

The TeamSTEPPS framework is a key collaboration approach to improve team communication and performance in healthcare settings. The evidence-based approach to this collaboration between nurses and physicians (Hassan et al., 2024) uses clear communication, mutual respect, and shared goals. Structures such as structured team training, role clarification, and feedback mechanisms are provided by the framework, which may assist with resolving communication breakdowns in patient handovers.

The organization can use TeamSTEPPS to create a culture of collaboration where all team members know their roles and responsibilities, resulting in better coordination and fewer errors (Hassan et al., 2024). This resource is very credible as it provides sufficient evidence to support the usefulness of TeamSTEPPS in improving interprofessional collaboration and patient outcomes, thus making it a useful and credible method of tackling the identified communication challenges.

Conclusion 

This assessment highlighted the importance of addressing communication breakdowns through interdisciplinary collaboration. By applying Lewin’s Change Theory, transformational leadership strategies, and evidence-based approaches like TeamSTEPPS, healthcare organizations can foster a cohesive, collaborative environment, improving communication, teamwork, and patient outcomes while supporting sustainable organizational improvements.

References

Eva, T. P., Afroze, R., & Sarker, M. A. R. (2024). The impact of leadership, communication, and teamwork practices on employee trust in the workplace. Management Dynamics in the Knowledge Economy, 12(3), 241–261. https://doi.org/10.2478/mdke-2024-0015

Hassan, A. E., Mohammed, F. A., Zakaria, A. M., & Ibrahim, I. A. (2024). Evaluating the effect of TeamSTEPPS on teamwork perceptions and patient safety culture among newly graduated nurses. BMC Nursing, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-024-01850-y 

Capella FPX 4005 Assessment 2

Jankelová, N., & Joniaková, Z. (2021). Communication skills and transformational leadership style of first-line nurse managers in relation to job satisfaction of nurses and moderators of this relationship. Healthcare, 9(3), 346. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9030346 

Simons, M., Goossensen, A., & Nies, H. (2022). Interventions fostering interdisciplinary and inter-organizational collaboration in health and social care; an integrative literature review. Journal of Interprofessional Education & Practice, 28(28), 100515. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xjep.2022.100515 

Slade, S., & Sergent, S. R. (2023). Interview techniques. PubMed; StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK526083/

Smith, T. G., Norasi, H., Herbst, K. M., Kendrick, M. L., Curry, T. B., Grantcharov, T. P., Palter, V. N., Hallbeck, M. S., & Cleary, S. P. (2022). Creating a practical transformational change management model for novel artificial intelligence–enabled technology implementation in the operating room. Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Innovations, Quality & Outcomes, 6(6), 584–596. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mayocpiqo.2022.09.004

Capella FPX 4005 Assessment 2