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Question
Propose a change at the department on unit level and develop a plan for guiding the change effort, Focus on Kurt Lewin’s change theory in course reading chapter 8, contrast it with other classic change models and strategies. I have attached the entire essay guide andI’ve also uploaded a template for instructions. Pls be sure to check for plagiarism for it is a big issue; our school does not grade anything with more than 1.5% plagiarism. Please. The pages is 4pgs excluding introduction, title, and references. The paper has to have a title, introduction, summary and references. the summary (conclusion) should be at the end, just before the references. These are the school rules. Thanks.
Answer
Application: Planned Change
Contents
Application: Planned Change. 1
Medication Errors in Washington Healthcare Facilities. 2
Realistic Change Addressing the Issue. 2
Relevant Professional Standards. 4
Change Model to Guide Planning for Change Implementation. 4
Outlined Steps to Facilitate Change. 5
Individual Initiating/Managing Change/Skills. 6
Introduction
Every year, more than 7,000 deaths associated with medication errors occur in the United States (Starfield, 2000). Such errors affect the healthcare institution, the registered nurses (RNs) on call as well as the families of the patient and as such should be avoided at all costs. The best way to reduce or avoid medication errors altogether is by implementing the bar-coded medical administration (BCMA). This paper discusses medication errors in healthcare facilities in Washington, explains the reasons as to why it is important, and provides an action plan to implement the change using Kurt Lewin’s change management theory.
Medication Errors in Washington Healthcare Facilities
As mentioned before, medication errors not only affect the healthcare facilities but the nursing staff, patient and their families. These errors further result in increasedhealthcare costs creating consumer mistrust. In Washington especially, most RNs still use traditional means of administering medication to the patients. This means that more and more medication errors are bound to occur over the next couple of years. It is, however, about time that this big margin of error is closed. Implementing change to a more efficient means of administering drugs will significantly reduce the number of deaths that occur due to medication errors.
Realistic Change Addressing the Issue
Bar-coded medical administration serves to ensure that the nurses administer the right medication to the patients by scanning their patient identification bands against their prescriptions (DeYoung, Vanderkooi& Barletta, 2009). According to the Washington State Nurses Association (WSNA), very few healthcare facilities in Washington have implemented bar-coded medication administration (2012). WSNA believes that the healthcare facilities that use traditional means of administering medication are prone to a higher percentage of errors as compared to the others that use aided designs (Rack, Dudjak& Wolf, 2011). It is therefore important for all the healthcare facilities within Washington and eventually around the world to implement this change to reduce the death toll due to medication errors.
Mission, Vision, Values
Mission:
By implementing the change to the use of bar-coded medical administration, the WSNA will be following their mission. WSNA believes in playing a leadership role to all the nurses registered with the organization (2016). They also serve to promote quality healthcare to all the patents through following all the rules and advocacy as well as education offered to them by their state. Implementing the change promotes the quality of healthcare by ensuring that the patients are administered their rightful medication.
Vision:
The vision of the Washington State Nurses Association is to be the body that in charge of leading the nursing profession to greatness by advocating for it in Washington (2016). Getting rid of traditional means of administering medication is a big step towards the direction of their vision. It is important that WSNA as an organization be willing to take initiative and train their nurses on how to use the equipment so as to improve health care in general.
Goal:
One of the main goals of WSNA is to lead the nursing profession to adopting change that is important and vital to nursing and health care in general (WSNA, 2016). This goal explains in a nutshell that it is in fact the responsibility of WSNA to ensure that any change that is beneficial to the nursing profession and healthcare facility in general is affected and adopted swiftly.
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Relevant Professional Standards
Medication errors are common in healthcare facilities all over the world. The National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (NCC MERP) has since dedicated massive resources to mitigating this problem. Therefore, through the help of NCC MERCP, all the healthcare facilities with the intention of introducing BCMA to their systems will have an easier time during their training and usage. NCC MERP ensures that BCMA is used accordingly and that all the authorized personnel are fully equipped to handle it.
Change Model to Guide Planning for Change Implementation
Lewin’s three-step change theory, social cognitive change theory and Lippitt’s phases of change theory are the most dominant theories associated with change management. According to Kurt Lewin, behavior towards change is a balance of opposing forces working together. In contrast, Lippit’sphases of change theory primarily focuses on the change agent instead of the opposing forces (Burnes, 2004; Kristonis, 2005 & Mitchell, 2013). Social cognitive theory on the other hand is based on the view that personal and environmental influences affect the behavior towards change (Kristonis, 2005).
In order to implement this particular change, I will focus on Lewin’s Change theory. Kurt Lewin come us up with three simple steps to implementing change; unfreezing, moving and refreezing stage (Fernandez & Rainey, 2006). The unfreezing stage is where the change to be effected is identified while the moving stage is where the change is put in motion and actually occurs (Burnes, 2004). The last stage is the refreezing stage which involves the evaluation of the implemented change as well as the period where the change becomes stable.
An important step to implementing change is figuring out the best theory for change management. Picking the wrong change theory could automatically lead to a failure while implementing the right theory could make the change process successful (Cummings & Worley, 2014). I firmly believe that Lewin’s change theory will be the best change theory as it goes step by step ensuring that the plan is comprehensive enough to ensure its success (Burke, 2017).
Outlined Steps to Facilitate Change
The steps to implementing the change are as follows:
- Identify the change
- Identifying the stakeholders
- Communication
- Create an implementation team
- Expenses
- Evaluation
During the unfreezing stage, the first important step is to identify the change. In this case, the plan is to change from the traditional medication administration methods to BCMA. This information has to be communicated to all the stakeholders that will play a role in seeing the change through. Moreover, this stage also involves creating an implementation team that will assist in implementing the change as well as raising the funds needed for the change (Sniehotta et al., 2005 & NCC MERP, 2012). The moving stage will include the actual planning of how the change will be implemented by analyzing everything that is required for the change including training programs and equipment. Lastly, the refreezing stage will involve evaluating whether the change was effective or not using questionnaires, interviews and data analysis.
Individual Initiating/Managing Change/Skills
In order to initiate the change, the hospital top management, all the stakeholders, investors, and departmental heads will be involved. This will ensure that all the interested parties are well-informed of the imminent change. Carrying on with the change without involving these interested parties will cause mistrust among them which could lead to them backing out. The departmental heads will be instrumental in mobilizing their employees to react positively to the change implementation and help accordingly.
This hand-picked team should be very hardworking. They should be willing to change for the better and have the ability to learn new skills whenever an opportunity arises. Moreover, they ought to be respectable and inspiring. In addition, having an effective team of leaders with great leadership approaches will make it easier to implement change at every juncture. I believe that this team will help propel Washington to greater heights through an elaborate and high quality healthcare system.
Summary
Medication errors are tragedies that can in most cases be avoided. To reduce the number of people that die annually due to these errors, BCMAs have to be introduced to every healthcare facility in Washington. BCMAs generally dramatically reduce the probability of a healthcare personnel administering the wrong prescription. This project involves the whole of Washington and as such will be very crucial to ensuring that the whole state has taken its registered nurses through the relevant training needed for the use of BCMAs. I can only hope that with time, all healthcare facilities across the country all over the world will implement the system.
References
Burke, W. W. (2017). Organization change: Theory and practice. New York, NY: Sage Publications.
Burnes, B. (2004). Kurt Lewin and the planned approach to change: A re‐appraisal. Journal of Management studies, 41(6), 977-1002.
Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C. G. (2014). Organization development and change. London: Cengage learning.
DeYoung, J., Vanderkooi, M., & Barletta, J. (2009). Effect of bar-code-assisted medication administration on medication error rates in an adult medical intensive care unit. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, 66(12), 1110-1115.
Fernandez, S., & Rainey, H. G. (2006). Managing successful organizational change in the public sector. Public Administration Review, 66(2), 168-176.
Kritsonis, A. (2005). Comparison of change theories. International Journal of Scholarly Academic Intellectual Diversity, 8(1), 1-7.
Mitchell, G. (2013). Selecting the best theory to implement planned change: Improving the workplace requires staff to be involved and innovations to be maintained. Gary Mitchell discusses the theories that can help achieve this. Nursing Management, 20(1), 32-37.
Rack,L., Dudjak, L., & Wolf, G., (2011). Study of Nurse Workarounds in a Hospital Using Bar Code Medication Administration System. Journal of Nursing Care Quality, 27(3) 232-239.
Sniehotta, F. F., Schwarzer, R., Scholz, U., &Schüz, B. (2005). Action planning and coping planning for long‐term lifestyle change: theory and assessment. European Journal of Social Psychology, 35(4), 565-576.
Starfield, B. (2000). Is US health really the best in the world? JAMA. 284(4), 483-485.
The National Coordinating Council for Medication Error reporting and Prevention. (2012). The National Coordinating Council for Medication Error reporting and Prevention.Retrieved from http://www.nccmerp.org/
Washington State Nurses Association. (2012). Administration of Medications. Position Paper.
Washington State Nurses Association. (2016). Vision, Mission & Goals. Retrieved from https://www.wsna.org/about/vision-mission-goals
