Name

Capella university

NURS FPX 4010 Leading in Intrprof Practice

Prof. Name

Date

Interview Summary  

I am a registered nurse in my healthcare organization, Tampa General Hospital. Lately, I sat with my head nurse and conducted an interview on prevailing healthcare issues, which requires an interdisciplinary approach. Additionally, I used probing techniques to delve into detailed matters and seek clarification on ambiguous points. The head nurse informed that Tampa General Hospital has been facing a higher rate of medication errors, impacting patient safety and quality of care. She further informed me about her role and responsibilities, including overseeing nursing staff, delegating duties among nurses, and coordinating care. 

Upon delving further into the issues, the head nurse raised issues of poor communication and collaboration among healthcare professionals that resulted in several medication errors. She further informed that leadership had developed policies on double-checking and adequate communication to address the prevailing issue. However, the effectiveness of these policies was a point of discussion. The head nurse described that most of the nursing staff was not complying with policies, resulting in higher nurse turnover rates, ultimately leading to higher prevalence rates of medication errors in the healthcare system.

The organizational culture required change as it could not foster an environment conducive to broad collaboration among multidisciplinary teams. She also mentioned that the hospital administrator conducted interdisciplinary team meetings to discuss the matter. Still, most members needed to show their presence due to time constraints and busy schedules at the hospital. In my interview, I used various strategies to gather enough information on the dominant healthcare issue in our organization. The strategies included in conducting interview are open-ended questions using What, Why, and How to elicit detailed and meaningful responses from the interviewee (Roberts, 2020). 

Issue Identification

The interview with my head nurse helped me identify the issue of medication errors at Tampa General Hospital. Medication errors are preventable adverse events in prescribing, dispensing, and administering medications. This issue can be avoided by implementing an interdisciplinary team approach where physicians, pharmacists, and nurses must coordinate and administer drugs as per patients’ health needs (Wei et al., 2019). The multidisciplinary team approach can identify and address issues that lead to the onset of medication errors, such as communication breakdowns, system weaknesses, technological challenges, and human factors (Manias et al., 2020).

By collaborating with an interdisciplinary team of physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and information technologists, medical errors can be significantly reduced, well-informed communication is encouraged, and multifactorial issues can be collaboratively addressed. This will lead to implementing strategies targeting the underlying cause of medication errors (Rodziewicz & Hipskind, 2020).

Change Theories That Could Lead to an Interdisciplinary Solution

Kotter’s 8-step Change Model (KCM) is one of the change theories that could be applied to develop an interdisciplinary solution for addressing medication errors. This model is a structured framework to bring changes within organizations. In healthcare, this change theory developed by John Kotter can improve patient safety and reduce medication errors by using an interdisciplinary team approach (PonceVega & Williams, 2021).

The steps involved in this change theory will convey the urgency of reducing and minimizing medication errors by gathering and presenting data on the prevalence and consequences of these errors. This will be followed by assembling an interdisciplinary team coalition to address medication errors. The leader will create a vision for change in the healthcare system with reduced medication errors by highlighting the roles of interdisciplinary team members to achieve the vision (Harrison et al., 2021).

Furthermore, communication on sharing vision will be encouraged, emphasizing the shared responsibility of each member in diminishing these errors. The leader will assess barriers to interdisciplinary team collaboration and implement changes to promote interdisciplinary collaboration and communication. Lastly, the efficacy of these collaborative sessions will be evaluated, and changes will be reinforced within the organization (PonceVega & Williams, 2021). The KCM theory is relevant to medication errors as the evidence-based resource by PonceVega and Williams (2021) highlights