Assignment task:
I aligned most with one of the first stories from The Heart of Change called "Gloves on the Boardroom Table". Working in a healthcare environment that is constantly pushing to "do more with less", this story resonated with me. The story outlines a problem often seen in conglomerations (companies that have grown in size via mergers and acquisitions), but also in smaller scale organizations like the hospital network I belong to. The hospital where I practiced as an ICU nurse was considered the "hub" of our network, taking the most critically ill patients from the outside - more rural facilities. In the mid- 2010's our network absorbed two rural facilities in Eastern New York each previously operating independently. Due to their operating independently, they had their own suppliers for healthcare goods and services. Initially this wasn't a huge deal but as time went on, our Critical Care and Emergency Medicine teams started realizing that these previously "out-of-house" organizations were all using different equipment; IV's, Pumps, Arterial-lines, central lines etc - often from different manufacturers. As you can imagine when working on critically ill patients who have incompatible access became routine as the "hub" began receiving more and more ICU level cases.
Similar to the "Gloves on a Boardroom Table" story, our network leadership has since rolled out transition plans for each outside hospital. As you can imagine, aligning all of the critical access providers to change up their equipment "because the big hospital does it that way" caused quite a bit of strife. As a result this transition has taken several years, and is still "rolling out" for material lines in some of the smaller organizations within our network.
The secret, much like the authors noted, was that the network leaders needed to reach the outside providers on an emotional level, or at least build a level of trust and understanding. In order to accomplish this, ICU physicians from the "hub", started taking ICU shifts at these outside hospitals, and began teaching/ introducing the equipment used at the primary ICU's. Like I mentioned earlier it has taken some time, but the network is transitioning each hospital to use the same equipment across the system. Need Assignment Help?