NURS 8210 Week 10 Information Systems And Changing Organizational Culture
NURS 8210: Transforming Nursing and Healthcare Through Technology
INITIAL POST
Information Systems and Changing Organizational Culture
Culture change in organizations is impacted by the technology and informatics guiding education reform (TIGER) who suggested strategies to impact change after realizing that this one of seven pillars of change strategies frame did not reach the consensus after their 2006 summit (Ball et al., 2011, p.13). The other pillars of change strategies identified during the 2006 TIGER summit include management and leadership, education, communication and collaboration, informatic design, information technology, and policy (Ball et al., 2011, p.13). In this Discussion, we explore change leadership strategies through role-playing as we select an information technology initiative, evaluate potential barriers to its implementation, then identify change management and leadership strategies to employ.
Information Technology Initiative
The bar code medication administration (BCMA) is one of many information technologies (IT) that could support the TC2-GUI inpatient charting application at the United States (US) Combat Support Hospital (CSH) located overseas. A project was conducted in this setting regarding the TC2-GUI application, and findings showed that BCMA is one innovation that could promote evidence-based practice (EBP) and efficiency within this organization. Alotaibi and Federico (2017) presented evidence that BCMA will reduce medication errors, adverse drug reactions, and mislabeled laboratory specimen. This additional system would support the TC2-GUI application to provide efficiency, improve safety and patient outcome. Subsequently, this change would affect the end-user’s workflow and the organization’s budgeting.
Barriers to Implementation and Change Strategies
The above human and financial barriers are the major categories of barriers in implementing HIT recognized by Khalifa (2013), who added other potential barriers such as professional, technical, organization, and legal and regulatory barriers. As one major barrier, human beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes the users may have difficulty changing if they are not aware of the importance and benefits of BCMA, they may also lack knowledge and experience of a computer with its applications. The suggested solution includes teaching and training and providing awareness of the importance and benefits of the new system (Khalifa, 2013). Provide training to fulfill the TIGER informatics competencies, including the basic computer, information literacy, and information management competencies (TIGER, 2011). As another barrier, financial challenges related to money and funding could be initial cost, high cost to operate and maintain the system, or lack of feasibility study showing its benefits versus cost; some solutions could be allocating the proper funding and funding and conducting a feasibility study (Khalifa, 2013)
Reference
Alotaibi, Y. K., & Federico, F. (2017). The impact of health information technology on patient safety. Saudi medical journal, 38(12), 1173–1180. https://doi.org/10.15537/smj.2017.12.20631
Ball, M. J., Douglas, J. V., Hinton Walker, P., DuLong, D., Gugerty, B., Hannah, K. J., . . . Troseth, M. R. (Eds.) (2011). Nursing informatics: Where technology and caring meet (4th ed.). Springer-Verlag.
Khalifa, M. (2013). Barriers to health information systems and electronic medical records implementation. A field study of Saudi Arabian hospitals. Procedia Computer Science, 21, 335-342.
T.I.G.E.R. Technology Informatics Guiding Education Reform. (2011). Informatics competencies collaborative team. https://web.archive.org/web/20150910131244/http://www.thetigerinitiative.org/docs/tigerreport_informaticscompetencies.pdf
The TIGER initiative was developed to bring together nursing stakeholders to brainstorm on issues that matter in the profession. TIGER addresses actions such as medication delivery of healthcare and H.I.T. (TIGER, 2011). According to TIGER initiatives, nursing stakeholders who commit to implementing improvement plans should stick to the plans to develop them as agreed.
I.T. initiative
To implement a successful information system, some steps need to be followed. The initial step would be creating a solid team to work on the project. Through forming, storming, norming, and performing, and a dynamic team can be created. The multidisciplinary team members (including I.T.) will initially get to know one another, familiarizing themselves with the project’s goal. Interprofessional collaboration practice models can be used to assist in building high-performing teams (Chaney, 2021). An effective team is one that also displays effective communication. One has clear objectives, and every member has a clear understanding of the said objectives (Kim et al., 2019). Input from end-users is very important as they can provide pointers to a successful system.
In the computer patient records system (C.P.R.S.) I noticed that there is no availability in recording continuous bladder irrigation (C.B.I.) input and output.
Change management for successful implementation
To be successful in this project, I would have to act as a mediator between end-users, management, and I.T. developers. Internal mediation is then carried out with organization leaders and nurse managers. Computer literacy is essential; therefore, a few employees will be trained as superusers to help educate fellow staff members on using the systems and troubleshooting issues should they arise. The superusers will, in turn, provide feedback and will be the change agents for implementation. Members of the help desk will be trained as well in case their services are needed. In addition, external contractors can be hired to act as backup services to the system; therefore, there should always be someone available to help.
Potential barriers
Not every employee accepts change; to ease this, it is important to include and keep stakeholder members well informed on the progress of the implementation. Effective communication is vital, let everyone be heard and ideas acted on. Security is important in H.I.T. All barriers to breaches should be set in place. The superusers would continue to track the progress of the system. Keep communication transparent. Costs and estimates are some factors that I would need to investigate since funding is equally important. Any proposed changes should be rectified promptly. I.T. also informed me that C.P.R.S. has no more space to accommodate a flow sheet, so I must rethink and currently am in the process.
References
Chaney, A. (2021). Building your team and talent. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, 33 (10), 761-762. doi: 10.1097/JXX.0000000000000649.
Kim, L. Y., Giannitrapani, K. F., Huynh, A. K., Ganz, D. A., Hamilton, A. B., Yano, E. M., Rubenstein, L. V., & Stockdale, S. E. (2019). What makes team communication effective: a qualitative analysis of interprofessional primary care team members’ perspectives. In Journal of Interprofessional Care (Vol. 33, Issue 6, pp. 836–838). https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1080/13561820.2019.1577809
T.I.G.E.R. Information Technology Guiding Education Reform. (2011). Informatics Competencies collaborative team. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20150910131244/http://www.thetigerinitiative.org/docs/tigerreport_informaticscompetencies.pdf
Umstead, C. N., Unertl, K. M., Lorenzi, N. M., & Novak, L. L. (2021). Enabling adoption and use of new health information technology during implementation: Roles and strategies for internal and external support personnel. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 28(7), 1543–1547. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1093/jamia/ocab044