Being a nurse means that one must be prepared to face numerous challenges (Kelly, 2006) and be ready with an appropriate strategy to address the emerging issues (Kelly, 2006a). Personally, I have encountered a range of situations, in which the outcomes hinged on my competence and skills. However, by far the greatest challenge that a nurse may face is the necessity to be an efficient change agent (Newhouse, 2007).
In my clinical practice setting, it was crucial to reconsider the hand-off communication process within the nursing setting of the hospital and to improve the communication process by introducing the elements of new media into the context of the setting. In other words, new forms of media were supposed to be utilized in order to transfer information. I was among the few people, who were assigned with the task of administering the new tool to the rest of the nursing staff.
It should be noted that the process of the new tools installation and the application of the newly acquired skills to practice took much more time than planned. Even though most of the staff members were quite used to utilizing the modern media tools in their everyday life, using the online interface created for the staff to store and share the information con the patients and the tasks to complete was rather complicated for most of the staff.
With the introduction of the evidence-based practice model (Grant, Colello, Riehle, & Dende, 2010), however, a range of changes occurred. It was rather impressive to see people acquiring new skills so easily after the new tools were shown in practice. More to the point, the evidence-based model has shown once again that the gap between theory and practice is admittedly big, especially in the hospital setting; however, by developing reflective skills with the help of regular training, one can help bridge this gap, thus, making the transgression from theory to practice possible.
It would be wrong to claim that the evidence-based model is a silver bullet that can be used in any situation when the nursing staff is introduced to a new experience. However, in the case of adopting new hands-off communication principles, the model served its purpose well. Not only did the staff finally realize the numerous benefits of the new media tools, but also learned to use them rather quickly after the new media tools were included in the set of equipment used for the hands-off communication.
In a retrospect, the process of installing new media tools as the means for hands-off communication between the nurses, and the following evidence-based training of the necessary skills, were rather long. Instead of taking a month, as it had been planned prior to the experiment, the rearrangement of the nursing strategies and the steps that needed to be taken to acquire the records on the patients and the following training of the staff took three months. The results turned out to be quite impressive, though. Since recently, information leakage has been reduced by half, and data loss no longer occurs in the hospital setting.
The experience described above shows that to sustain changes at any level, responsiveness among the staff and their readiness for cooperation is crucial (Baur, 2011). In addition, a clear and concise plan of actions to be taken is required (Ferrara, 2010). With the key goals and objectives in mind, one can carry out the transformation of the nursing setting on any level, starting from the organizational one to the policy level.
Reference List
Baur, C. (2011). Calling the nation to act: Implementing the national action plan to improve health literacy. Nursing Outlook, 59(2), 63–69.
Ferrara, L. R. (2010). Integrating evidence-based practice with educational theory in clinical practice for nurse practitioners: Bridging the theory-practice gap. Research & Theory for Nursing Practice, 24(4), 213–216.
Grant, B., Colello, S., Riehle, M., & Dende, D. (2010). An evaluation of the nursing practice environment and successful change management using the new generation Magnet Model. Journal of Nursing Management, 18(3), 326–331.
Kelly, D. L. (2006). Improving processes and implementing improvements. Applying quality management in healthcare: A systems approach. Washington, DC: AUPHA.
Kelly, D. L. (2006a). Measuring process and system performance. Applying quality management in healthcare: A systems approach. Washington, DC: AUPHA.
Newhouse, R. P. (2007). Creating infrastructure supportive of evidence-based nursing practice: Leadership strategies. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, 4(1), 21–29.