Introduction
The interviewee, in this case, was the Director of Nursing in an independently licensed free-standing ambulatory surgery center (ASC). The organization has 25 employees including full-time, part-time, and casual workers. The ASC performs a variety of same-day surgeries including but not limited to orthopedic/sports medicine, ENT, ophthalmology, GI, breast surgery, and podiatry. The interviewee’s primary duties in the organization include overseeing the everyday workflow, staffing patterns, and scheduling at the ASC. He is responsible for the hiring of staff, their schedule, and timekeeping, and the structure and organization of the surgical schedule. He is also expected to recruit and maintain open communication and relationship with surgeons and their office teams. He reports through surgical services leadership at a hospital within the organization.
Since its opening on December 1, 2020, the ASC has been facing the problem of establishing consistent volumes of cases and ensuring that the involved teams are working their hours. To address this issue, the interviewee has to spend time recruiting new surgeons by contacting them, providing tours, and learning their needs and wants. Additionally, he has to become creative with staffing patterns and look for other options for the team members if he cannot provide them with their hours. The interviewee noted that these issues are being addressed continuously whereby meetings with the ASC’s leadership team are held biweekly coupled with maintaining a consistent agenda by utilizing a working document with all of the team’s communication with the various surgeons.
The interviewee added that interdisciplinary collaboration is essential in the organization. Together with his team, they collaborate daily with many other departments on and off-site to ensure that daily workflow runs smoothly. According to the interviewee, he has been working as part of interdisciplinary teams in all aspects of his career and the experience is rewarding as he learns how the other departments work, builds relationships, and fosters teamwork. He has also managed to build communication and trust between team members of all the departments that he works with.
Issue Identification
The main problem facing the ASC organization is that of low case volumes. In other words, the hospital lacks enough clients to sustain its operations and ensure that all workers get enough hours according to their terms of engagement. Therefore, there is an urgent need to come up with a strategy to address this problem. One of the ways that the ASC could use to ensure increased case volumes is by improving the quality and efficiency of care services offered. This way, patients would be convinced to revisit as repeat clients and refer their friends and relatives to the healthcare facility. This assertion underscores the need for the implementation of a change process, which requires the direct input of the various interdisciplinary teams working in the organization. According to Rosen et al. (2018), “The coordination and delivery of safe, high-quality care demand reliable teamwork and collaboration within, as well as across, organizational, disciplinary, technical, and cultural boundaries” (p. 433). This observation is one specific reason why an interdisciplinary approach would be appropriate for the issue raised in this interview.
Change Theories that Could Lead to an Interdisciplinary Solution
For a successful change to be implemented, a theoretical basis of a certain model of change is needed to offer step-by-step guidelines on how the various stages of change should be executed. In this case, Kurt Lewin’s change model or theory could be employed at the ASC to improve the quality and efficiency of services offered. According to Hussain et al. (2018), Kurt Lewin’s change model has three steps – unfreezing, changing, and freezing, which is a simple and practical model for understanding and implementing any change process. This model is appropriate for the creation of an interdisciplinary solution as it involves all the stakeholders.
For instance, in the issue of improving volume cases at the ASC organization, the interviewee could use the unfreezing phase to create awareness about the underlying problem and how the current way of operations is hindering progress towards finding a solution. During the changing phase, the real transition takes place whereby the set change goals to improve the quality and efficiency of care services are implemented. In the last phase, refreezing, the interviewee would reinforce, stabilize, and solidify the new state after implementing the change. Therefore, this theory of change is relevant to the issue of improving quality and efficiency at ASC as part of increasing case volumes as it involves all the stakeholders needed for the change process to be successful. The reference by Hussain et al. (2018) is credible for it is a peer-reviewed journal article and relevant as it discusses a change theory that could be applied in managing interdisciplinary teams.
Leadership Strategies that Could Lead to an Interdisciplinary Solution
Transformational leadership is the best strategy that could be used to lead to an interdisciplinary solution. According to Krepia et al. (2018), transformational leadership “is a leadership style based on the trust and respect that employees feel about their leader” (p. 190). As such, employees are motivated and inspired to exceed what is typically expected from them in the quest to achieve the set organizational goals. Therefore, when every member of the various teams is working towards the achievement of a common goal, it becomes easy to achieve an interdisciplinary solution.
For instance, in the ASC case above, the various teams and individuals including surgeons, nurses, administrators, and all other stakeholders would work in concert under the leadership of the interviewee to ensure that the goal of improving the quality and efficiency of care is achieved. Consequently, patients would enjoy the quality and timely care services and in return come back as repeat clients or refer their friends and relatives. Ultimately, the organization would have increased case volumes and all teams will have enough work for their allocated hours. The reference source used here is credible as it is a peer-reviewed journal article and relevant because it addresses the issue of leadership strategies associated with interdisciplinary solutions.
Collaboration Approaches for Interdisciplinary Teams
For interdisciplinary teams to work together successfully, the best collaboration practices should be employed. Rosen et al. (2018) argue that positive leadership, effective communication strategies, training and development of workers, appropriate skill mix, teamwork, clarity of vision, and understanding and respecting roles are some of the best approaches that could be applied in an interdisciplinary workplace. The interviewee noted that interdisciplinary collaboration plays a central part in the organization. For instance, the ASC’s leadership team meets biweekly to evaluate the progress and strategize on the way forward. Therefore, the leadership could improve on these collaboration efforts by ensuring that goals are clearly stated with all members or teams knowing their specific roles towards the achievement of the common objectives. Additionally, the interviewee should ensure that he gets the right skill mix for the professional execution of duties. The reference source by Rosen et al. (2018) is credible having been published in a reputable peer-review journal.
References
Hussain, S. T., Lei, S., Akram, T., Haider, M. J., Hussain, S. H., & Ali, M. (2018). Kurt Lewin’s change model: A critical review of the role of leadership and employee involvement in organizational change. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 3(3), 123-127. Web.
Krepia, V., Katsaragakis, S., Kaitelidou, D., & Prezerakos, P. (2018). Transformational leadership and its evolution in nursing. Progress in Health Sciences, 8(1), 189-194. Web.
Rosen, M. A., DiazGranados, D., Dietz, A. S., Benishek, L. E., Thompson, D., Pronovost, P. J., & Weaver, S. J. (2018). Teamwork in healthcare: Key discoveries enabling safer, high-quality care. The American Psychologist, 73(4), 433-450. Web.