Assessment 2: Interview and Interdisciplinary Issue Identification
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Interview and Interdisciplinary Issue Identification
Coordination of established healthcare components is important as they are complex and interrelated, improving patient outcomes (Bhati et al., 2023). Medication errors are a major concern and an immediate crisis for Mount Sinai Hospital. According to an interview with Ms. Shayna Williams of the medical-surgical ward, this assessment demonstrates the seriousness of the prescription error problem. This metric can then identify potential theories of change, leadership initiatives, and collaborative practices that will help address this problem.
Summary of Interview
In her interview, Ms. Shayna Williams from Mount Sinai Hospital prodded deep into the institution’s history and current issues. Ms. Williams, the nurse supervisor in the medical-surgical unit, has two responsibilities: patient care and staff deployment. Respondent thinks medication errors are common throughout the hospital but are a particular problem in the medical-surgical unit in which Ms. Williams works. Such mistakes have a chilling effect on healthcare workers’ morale and patient safety, raising questions about the utility of these services (Bhati et al., 2023). Electronic medicine administration records and the organization’s investment in staff expertise through training have not eliminated this worry, either.
Ms. Williams also described the role of leadership in dealing with these issues. At the early stages of their careers as healthcare executives, such leaders focused on reducing prescription errors by institutionalizing a new standard of professional practice and providing personnel with educational resources (Park et al., 2022). It still needs to work. As Ms. Williams indicates, the organization knows that interdisciplinary collaboration is necessary, but it might not be implemented similarly. Although her experience inside the corporate walls was limited to quality initiatives, she had also seen corporate culture shatter that success.
Issue Identification
The interview showed that research, including an interdisciplinary approach, is the most effective way to combat medication errors, impacting Mount Sinai Hospital’s medical-surgical unit most. Taking these into consideration, a multi-sectoral strategy is needed. They are system, multi-faceted medical errors and should be fixed as the top priority of the healthcare sector – including doctors, pharmacists, nurses, and quality improvement specialists (Mutair et al., 2021). Consequently, causes of pharmaceutical errors need to be identified, and definitions should be given. As such, other fields have to come in to fight them; we need to know that other angles are involved. More importantly, interdisciplinary engagement is also positively associated with patient outcomes in a crucial part of patient care, pharmaceutical safety (Park et al., 2022). With best practices drawn from many industries, the hospital can implement a stronger, more enduring way to decrease the frequency of medication errors. In this context, the most common procedures are the standard methods of medicine administration, barcode scanning technology, and the standard medication reconciliation procedure.
Potential Change Theories and Leadership Strategies
Mount Sinai Hospital is considering Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model to eradicate prescription errors dramatically and completely. Data about pharmaceutical errors should be an initial approach used by interdisciplinary teams to underscore the severity of the issue (Zaij et al., 2023). Establishing a coalition of concerned healthcare professionals is the third objective, and the second is formulating a vision for medication safety. The fourth through the eighth activities are about sharing the vision, dividing up responsibilities, making some early wins, and finally, making the new habits from the implementation phase part of the company culture. Kotter’s 8-Step Model of Change is highly relevant for prescription errors at Mount Sinai Hospital due to its simple strategy for gaining support and making long-term changes (Zaij et al., 2023). The model’s results have confidence since there is prior knowledge and research on change management’s effects on businesses.
As Urrila et al. (2024) mention, a servant leadership culture is optimal for organizations as it increases morale, self-esteem, and teamwork while safeguarding the health of workers and patients, among other things. This strategy aims to lower the chance of pharmaceutical errors at Mount Sinai Hospital by increasing interdepartmental communication and enhancing and carrying out evidence-based solutions. They put this focus on people, meaning patients in this instance, and in so doing, they emphasized goals that keep treatment high. Research by Urrila et al. (2024) reveals the good impact of servant leadership on patient satisfaction, employee enthusiasm, and company loyalty. Therefore, it offers an appropriate, although somewhat reliable, scheme to fix the pharmaceutical errors that affect Mount Sinai Hospital.
However, drastically reducing prescription mistakes at Mount Sinai Hospital includes a combination of leadership tactics. Transformational leadership involving self-improvement and shared objectives (Mouazen et al., 2024) is one of the best ways for leaders to motivate their teams to achieve their best capability. This method aims to train employees on their responsibilities while dealing with medications, establish a culture of reporting events, and teach employees how to prevent pharmaceutical errors. Leaders who transform or transform a team can guide the culture to use new practices, and change is more likely to stay by setting clear goals, applauding the team, and dealing with resistance to change (Mouazen et al., 2024). This strategy complements Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model by simultaneously presenting the goal of pharmaceutical safety in the hospital and guaranteeing support for that goal and its ongoing practice.
Collaborative Approaches
An initiative by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) called TeamSTEPPS aims to teach healthcare workers how to improve their communication and performance on the job. Eventually, this will result in safer patient care. This component (training interdisciplinary team members to communicate in specialized ways such as huddles, debriefs, and briefs) is intended to increase system-wide situational awareness, mutual support, and decision-making (Samardzic et al., 2020). Implementing TeamSTEPPS to decrease prescription errors and improve patient safety is needed. Errors can occur, and this is a place where TeamSTEPPS is especially relevant, as Mount Sinai Hospital has admitted to pharmaceutical mistakes. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (2023), it aims at the root cause of the problem: These are all a result of a lack of cooperation and communication. TeamSTEPPS is an evidence-based program with credibility; research shows that TeamSTEPPS increases team efficiency and patient status and thus has proven useful. Using the information from the official AHRQ website, containing detailed information and several directions on implementing TeamSTEPPS, provides the approach credibility and association to organizational issues.
Interprofessional Education (IPE) is a way of teaching and learning where students from various health profession classes work together to understand each other better and themselves (Mohammed et al., 2021). These iterations show that students who participate in IPE early in the course will be prepared to work together methodically in clinical practice settings later. IPE workshops will help the medical staff at Mount Sinai Hospital learn to value each other and work better together. The identified problem is relevant to IPE because it directly addresses the need to coordinate the multitude of healthcare professionals involved in drug management to reduce medication errors. Previous studies have shown that IPE increases communication, teamwork, and patient outcomes (Mohammed et al., 2021). Consequently, the implementations that have been presented here are valid on IPE. This preceding plan is built on sound research and can be applied to the organizational issue. It is a peer-reviewed academic essay published in a high-ranked medical education journal.
Most Credible
The TeamSTEPPS approach is the most viable because it is used in healthcare and endorsed by AHRQ. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (2023) is a reputable federal organization working with evidence to develop programs and guidelines to enhance healthcare quality and safety. Another legitimacy of TeamSTEPPS is that the AHRQ official website to execute TeamSTEPPS has provided complete instructions and every material required for TeamSTEPPS execution. To reduce the likelihood of prescription errors, Mount Sinai Hospital’s leadership can employ TeamSTEPPS, a time-tested process for increased communication and interaction between various types of healthcare providers.
Conclusion
An interview with Ms. Williams about problems with medication errors at Mount Sinai Hospital showed the importance of interprofessional partnerships in health care. Organizations can develop these good components of organizational culture by implementing evidence-based reviews for leadership and change, such as Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model or servant leadership. Structured protocols enhance care delivery team members’ interpersonal and organizational competencies, enhancing patient care and decreasing medication errors using synergistic interventions such as TeamSTEPPS and Interprofessional education. Healthcare organizations can improve the quality and safety of care if they encourage interdisciplinary solutions.
References
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2023). TeamSTEPPS (team strategies and tools to enhance performance and patient safety). Www.ahrq.gov. https://www.ahrq.gov/teamstepps-program/index.html
Bhati, D., Deogade, M. S., & Kanyal, D. (2023). Improving patient outcomes through effective hospital administration: A comprehensive review. Cureus, 15(10), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.47731
Mohammed, C. A., Anand, R., & Ummer, V. S. (2021). Interprofessional education (IPE): A framework for introducing teamwork and collaboration in health professions curriculum. Medical Journal Armed Forces India, 77(1), S16–S21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mjafi.2021.01.012
Mouazen, A. M., Lara, H. A. B., Abdallah, F., Ramadan, M., Chahine, J., Baydoun, H., & Bou Zakhem, N. (2024). Transformational and transactional leaders and their role in implementing the Kotter change management model ensuring sustainable change: An empirical study. Sustainability, 16(1), 16. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16010016
Mutair, A. A., Alhumaid, S., Shamsan, A., Zaidi, A. R. Z., Mohaini, M. A., Al Mutairi, A., Rabaan, A. A., Awad, M., & Al-Omari, A. (2021). The effective strategies to avoid medication errors and improving reporting systems. Medicines, 8(9). https://doi.org/10.3390/medicines8090046
Park, J., & Han, A. Y. (2022). Medication safety education in nursing research: Text network analysis and topic modeling. Nurse Education Today, 121, 105674. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2022.105674
Samardzic, M., Doekhie, K. D., & Wijngaarden, J. D. H. (2020). Interventions to improve team effectiveness within health care: A systematic review of the past decade. Human Resources for Health, 18(2), 1–42. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12960-019-0411-3
Urrila, L., & Eva, N. (2024). Developing oneself to serve others? Servant leadership practices of mindfulness-trained leaders. Journal of Business Research, 183, 114858–114858. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2024.114858
