17 Jan CBE Practice Excellence Through Innovation

You currently serve as a nursing member of a Practice Excellence Committee. The administration has proposed a new barcode system for medication retrieval by nurses at the bedside. The purpose of the new system is to decrease medication errors by providing nurses with an opportunity to retrieve medications at the bedside, where clients and family members can ask questions and receive immediate feedback. At the beginning of the shift, each nurse will check out a medication box based on assigned clients. Once medications are verified, scanned, and removed, nurses can send text messages from the barcode scanner to the pharmacy should questions or concerns arise.

In the current medication retrieval system, the nurse must take a computer with client medication information to a central dispensing area and wait in line at the electronic medication dispensary for medications then return to the client’s bedside for administration. Hospital leaders are excited since the new beside barcode medication retrieval system is in response to a needs assessment of client and employee satisfaction survey data trended over three years and work by a consulting firm that identified the need after a six-month observation period for employee behaviors related to medication administration.

Today is the launch of the new system. You presented the new, proposed innovation at a medical employee staff meeting attended by nurses, pharmacists, physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, physical therapists, and respiratory therapists. Attendees received information, including a data summary supporting the change, a summary of the proposed change with equipment demonstration, and a proposed implementation plan, including timeline and employee expectations for adoption.

During the implementation portion of the presentation, a few employees voiced concerns and disrupted the meeting. You lost focus and felt defeated after the presentation; you thought the entire interprofessional team would be excited about the innovative medication administration system. Unfortunately, many nurses left the meeting before the whole implementation plan had been discussed expressing emotional outbursts with outward negativity toward the proposed innovative change.

To facilitate this change and address concerns you scheduled another meeting one month later in a town hall format with only nursing staff invited to attend. Before this meeting, you plan to create a Facts and Questions (FAQ) document based on three priority areas of concerns you noted from the first meeting. You plan to disperse the FAQ document in an email to invited nursing staff one week before the town hall to “break the ice.”

Instructions

Create a professional email with an attached FAQ document, which provides a detailed and succinct response to each question below and promotes a culture of excellence.

· Why do we need this change?

· Include a relevant example as supporting rationale with support from credible resources.

· Demonstrate how your response promotes a culture of excellence.

· What we currently use works well, why change now?

· Include a relevant example as supporting rationale with support from credible resources.

· Demonstrate how your response promotes a culture of excellence.

· Honestly, as a nurse, how will this new piece of equipment help me better perform my professional role?

· Include a relevant example as supporting rationale with support from credible resources.

· Demonstrate how your response promotes a culture of excellence.

Resources

· For additional information on managing conflict between nurses, please visit:

· American Nurses Association (ANA, 2023) website on Conflict Resolution Strategies for Nurse Leaders .

· Heering, H., Karakashian, A. L., & Hanson, D. (2021, June 25). Conflict management: An overview . Nursing Reference Center Plus.

· For additional assistance in understanding what people bring to conflict, please read Workplace Conflict Resolution Essentials for Dummies (Chapter 2)

· For additional assistance on writing effective emails, please visit Email Essentials: How to Write Effective Emails and Build Great Relationships One Message at a Time (Chapter 6)

· For additional assistance on email etiquette, please visit What is email etiquette? What should I do or not do in an email?

· For additional assistance on how to identify credible resources, please visit How do I know if a source is credible?