Leadership and Teams
Leadership and Teams Discussion
As an employee of a federal organization, I have gone through many changes over the years an inpatient nurse. Being the chair of a Nursing Shared Governance for my unit has given myself and other nurses from all units and areas to be empowered by having a voice when it comes to decision-making. This includes policy changes. There are a couple of experiences I have had as a team member that impacted change at my organization but one that sticks out the most is a change made to our charting system. When I first started out as a new nurse over five years ago, our charting system only listed a patient\\\’s life-sustaining treatment (LST) in the order sets, which was not easily accessible. To find the LST, you would have to click on the tab that showed the orders; it wouldn’t just show up as soon as you clicked on a patient. There were too many mouse clicks and again, not easily accessible, especially in an emergent situation.
During one of the Shared Governance meetings, we brought up this issue on how it took longer to access the code status than it should, especially if needed in an emergency or if there was a discrepancy with it. The discrepancy being that there are two active orders of a patient being a “Full Code” or “Do Not Resuscitate or DNR”. This eventually led to this change of it popping up in bold letters in a yellow box when you open a patient\\\’s chart. It involved many healthcare professionals, such as social work, internal medicine doctors, nurses, educational personnel, and many others. If there was a discrepancy with a LST, it would pop up in the yellow box in bold and say, “ACTION NEEDED – Discrepancy with LST order” and we could call the doctor right away and ask them to fix it.
This change led to a decrease in the delay of emergency care, improved communication between interdisciplinary teams, and improved the process when a patient came into the ED on their life sustaining treatment. Samuriwo (2022) wrote, “Meaningful change arises when things are understood as they are experienced, and people have a theory of action that reflect their own reality and praxis.” I feel this really relates to what it means to be a part of a nursing shared governance because our experiences of being on the floor can better an organization through policies and procedures. Looking back on this situation, it took a lot of time for it to go through the process to be approved due to schedule conflicts when it came to meetings, primarily being short staffed and not having anyone to cover on the floor for nurses or being busy on the floor and not being able to attend. Being able to step away from the floor would have improved this project. It led to our manager and assisted nurse managers stepping in and willing to watch our patients in order to support us and our future projects.
Requirements: 250 words
Answer preview to Leadership and Teams
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300 WORDS
