NURSFPX4010 Interdisciplinary Plan Proposal Interview and Interdisciplinary Issue Identification Interview Summary

For this assessment, I interviewed Lisa who is Registered Nurse at Chesapeake Regional hospital. She has been a nurse for the past 16 years and is currently working as a travel RN. Duties of this travel RN include all aspects of patient care including vitals, assessing, and monitoring patients, administer medications, conducting orders, and educating patients and families. Furthermore, she often takes on the responsibility of charge nurse. With her multiple years of experience and commitment to providing the best possible patient care, Lisa is an asset to the nursing staff.

Lisa describes Chesapeake Regional Medical Center, CRMC, as a small, mom-and-pop feel hospital. Everyone knows everyone, and everyone treats one another as a family of healthcare professionals. When bringing up the topic of issues within the organization, Lisa notes that there are similar issues in many organizations that she has currently worked for, and that no healthcare situation is ever the perfect scenario. Lisa states that the main issue has been nurse to patient staffing ratio. Even when there is an adequate amount of nursing staff, a nurse is often floated to another unit.

Furthermore, healthcare techs have been short as well, leaving little room for support amid a shortage of nurses. When asked to elaborate on how this effects her ability to perform tasks Lisa describes that when having a high nurse to patient ratio, work is usually done at a slower pace in that it takes longer to fulfill the basic tasks for each patient. Having to prioritize so closely makes it difficult to keep up and do the bare minimum. In addition, it makes for a higher chance of patient safety risks and lower customer service. Overall, while she feels each nurse can complete the duties, it has many negative results.

Lisa has been a travel RN at this organization for the past five months and in that time a new manger has come on board. The staff saw that as an opportunity to address this issue, among others. This was done by asking for meetings with management. Healthcare techs voiced their concerns as well. These meetings have brought up the conversation of retention for staff as a solution. The results have been empty promises from management to cap ratios. Tech staffing has been addressed as more have been hired and trained, however, floating is an everyday thing leaving some units, as this one, short. On days when that is not possible, they have blocked off rooms. The result of that has been the next shift having an influx of admissions.

When asked about the organizations general attitude related to collaboration, Lisa again went to the family-oriented feel of the hospital. The organization promotes teamwork and provides opportunities for collaboration for example, through floating a nurse from one unit to one that is more short-staffed. Still, this does not take away the fact that everyone is spread thin regardless. Everyone stays positive and work towards the common goal of providing the highest level of patient centered care.

Issue Identification

The issue of staffing in nursing is a complex one and thus must be solved in a complex manner. Interdisciplinary communication and teamwork are vital in healthcare and topics such as these among others, can be applied to the short staffing in nursing. According to Lou, et al. (2020), “team-based care is believed to improve quality of care” (p. 113). Without interdisciplinary communication and collaboration, there cannot be team-based care. Where staffing is concerned, interdisciplinary care is necessary to alleviate the stress felt by those on a team and provide support, mainly nurses in this case.

Furthermore, nursing staff alone cannot solve the issue of short staffing. There are multiple levels to the nursing team alone, i.e staff nurses, nurse managers, executive nurses, who must work together to address shortages while conducting delivery of care (Lou, et al., 2020). Even still, there is a shortage of nursing faculty along with an increasing need, so collaboration is necessary among not only nursing staff, but by improving communication among healthcare staff, distributing responsibility appropriately, and creating a team that works well to provide adequate care, despite shortcomings such as staffing (Perkins, 2021).