Nursing Assignment: Action Plan To Initiate Change Management Processes In Health Service

Question

Task:
Nursing Assignment Case study:
You are a health manager of a general practice clinic within a regional hospital and health service (HHS). You have been asked to head a project that involves setting up a COVID-19 clinic at the health promotion centre located adjacent to the largest regional hospital within the HHS. In collaboration with the hospital, the new clinic will manage the COVID-19 testing and vaccination services for consumers within your health service region. You have been informed that the COVID-19 clinic will need to be operational within a month, and the vaccine you will be supplied is the AstraZeneca vaccine. You have been provided with two staff members from the hospital to manage each of the COVID-19 services: the nurse unit manager (NUM) of the outpatient’s clinic and a community clinical nurse consultant (CNC). You must determine who will manage what service. The manager of the health promotion centre will support you with the transition processes to accommodate the new clinic.

You will also be provided with a pool of other resources that will include assets, personnel, budget, and policies to operationalise each new area of the clinic. You do not know the extent of these resources. The finer details such as the expected budget, the impact on personnel, the type of assets and supplies, or governance have not been determined however, you are informed that the following key areas are a priority in this project:

1. Budget: There will be a new budget for the clinic that will be funded through the state and federal government pandemic funding allocation and the HHS. The budget will be substantial to allow for adequately qualified staff, unique resources, and tight timelines particularly associated with the Australian government vaccine rollout program.
2. Personnel: There will be a range of personnel required to staff the new clinic: (administration, nursing, medical, service support and housekeeping). Unless necessary, these personnel must be those already employed within the hospital and health service. If additional staffs are required, the rationale for their employment must be provided.
3. Resources: Assets and supplies will need to be prioritised and some changes in the structure of the wound care clinic to accommodate the unique functions of three different services, running simultaneously from the one location and sharing resources. The current wound care clinic operates on two levels and provides allied health services to support their clients.
4. Governance: Staff in the new unit will be responsible for implementing new policies and creating a new governance structure, the most important being infection control measures and vaccination protocols and procedures.

Whilst nothing has been released officially from Executive, you are aware that some staff has heard ‘whispers’ about these changes, and anxiety and uncertainty has begun to filter throughout the hospital. Finer details such as the exact impact on personnel, the expected budget, assets and supplies, or governance have not been decided at this point in time.

PART 1: Action Plan
Create an action plan that outlines your plan to initiate change management processes to manage the required change in the health service.

Content: Your plan would outline the main area of concern (as listed in the case study description above) and the key issues you consider need to be addressed for that area, followed with (in the next column) the strategy you plan to use to address the area of concern. When outlining the strategy, provide a brief rationale or explanation for the strategy. In the next column, list the specific actions you will take to implement the strategy. Your plan will then have a column that outlines the potential barriers to the success of your strategy and a column for the timeframe to implement and complete the strategy. The final column of your plan will be used to outline the evaluation methods you would use to measure the success of the strategy - that is what methods you will use to know if the strategy you used to address the issue worked to address the issue.

Layout: The action plan will not exceed two A4 pages and should be presented in a table in landscape layout with a title and page numbers. This will allow you to include the necessary columns required for your action plan. In your table, in this instance, size 8 font, bullet points and single spacing is acceptable. References are not required in the table. Ensure each element of your plan is labelled clearly and is logical to read and follow.

PART 2: Written Paper
In this written paper, discuss the importance of using effective change management strategies to manage the impact of the change on the people involved in a change process. Select two strategies from your action plan that you believe best demonstrate your understanding of this and justify why these two strategies are effective change management strategies.

Answer

Nursing Assignment Part 1- Action Plan

Part 2- Written Paper
Importance of Effective Change Management Strategies
Implementing change management strategies is important in an organization to manage the impact that change has on the people involved in the change process because a change is successful with the help of the people or staffs of the organization. Alballaa & Al-Mudimigh (2011) has stated that change help the organization to increase their resilience against any crisis. This means that by implementing effective change management strategies a business will be able to implement change effectively and increase their chances of survival in the crisis environment. This is because change management will help in bringing positive adjustment to current adversity and strengthens their capability to overcome future challenges. With change management strategies the business will also enable the staffs to survive in the advent of the crisis and uncertainty bought by it and reduce the negative impact of the change on the staffs. Belias & Koustelios (2014) has noted that change management strategies will also help equip effective financial, structural and technological resources and communication network that can help the people involved in change to effectively facilitate the change without much issue. Teo, Lee & Lim (2017) has further stated that developing effective change management strategies is impact to manage the impact of change on the people involved in it because it reduces the difficulties of the people to implement change effectively and generate enormous benefits to the organizations in quality management, productivity, cost reduction and decision making. Moreover, change management strategies play a crucial role in preparing the employees and people responsible for the change by introducing them to the new systems, reduce resistance towards the new system and influence positive attitudes towards change. This makes implementation of change management strategies an important activity at the starting of the new project phase.

The most evident impact of change seen on the people involved in it is their resistance to the change process and this acts as a challenge. Implementing a change management strategy helps in eliminating the resistance and implement the change in the most efficient way so that it is accepted and adopted by people.

The change management strategies can be of different types that help address different areas of change implementation and reduce barriers such as leadership, governance, employee’s resistance and others. The two strategies from the action plan that best demonstrate my understanding of the importance of a change management strategyare to ensure that all the staffs are efficient enough to manage the covid-19 patients. and develop effective governance structure in the new covid-19 clinic. The strategy of ensuring that all staffs are efficient and capable enough to manage the covid-19 test and vaccination process through training is important because it helps in managing the impact of the change on the staffs involved in the change process. The training will help the staffs to safely provide covid-19 clinical service to people Imran et al., (2016) has stated that organization knowledge management strategy is important for successful change implementation. This is because training helps in building change readiness and weaken the negative effect of the change process. In the second strategy it is stated that effective governance structure should be formed in the newly developed covid-19 clinic including leadership structure. This is because leadership play an important role in change and a positive leader demonstrate emotional intelligence in nursing practice and will make the people involved in change to comfortably implement their healthcare service (Carragher & Gormley, 2017). Further, Belias & Koustelios (2014) also pointed out that effective leadership utilizes its relationship and activates resilience to change. Likewise, Termeer et al., (2015) has stated that governance capabilities are essential in deal with multiple issues in the change and respond effectively to uncertain changes. This is because a capable governance assists the people involved in the change such as the hospital and its staff to observe the situations using various lenses and this enables the people to implement effective strategies that can help them manage the change need. They also implement various policies and procedures to deal with the change process and allow the people to adopt to be flexible to changing processes. Based on these claims it is seen that these two strategies, which is stated in the action plan is important and effective for change management strategies.

References
Alballaa, H., & Al-Mudimigh, A. S. (2011). Change management strategies for effective enterprise resource planning systems: a case study of a Saudi company. international journal of computer applications, 17(2), 14-19.

Belias, D., &Koustelios, A. (2014). The impact of leadership and change management strategy on organizational culture. European Scientific Journal, 10(7).

Carragher, J., & Gormley, K. (2017). Leadership and emotional intelligence in nursing and midwifery education and practice: a discussion paper. Journal of advanced nursing, 73(1), 85-96.

Imran, M. K., Rehman, C. A., Aslam, U., & Bilal, A. R. (2016). What’s organization knowledge management strategy for successful change implementation? Nursing assignment Journal of Organizational Change Management.

Teo, W. L., Lee, M., & Lim, W. S. (2017). The relational activation of resilience model: How leadership activates resilience in an organizational crisis. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 25(3), 136-147.

Termeer, C. J., Dewulf, A., Breeman, G., & Stiller, S. J. (2015). Governance capabilities for dealing wisely with wicked problems. Administration & Society, 47(6), 680-710.