NURS FPX 6222 Assessment 5 Planning for Change: A Leader’s Vision

NURS FPX 6222 Assessment 5

Planning for Change: A Leader’s Vision

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Student name

Capella University

NURS-FPX6222

Professor Name

Submission Date

Planning for Change: A Leader’s Vision

The Planning for Change: A Leader’s Vision test emphasizes the critical role played by leadership in facilitating change within an organization, especially within a healthcare organization. As the healthcare environment continues to change, nurse leaders need to strive to achieve a clear image of change that can lead to quality and safety cultures. This assessment will involve taking into account the practices, management systems, and collaboration that must be integrated and implemented in bringing a sustainable change in medical practice. It dwells on the necessity to ensure that the organizational objectives include patient-centered care and enhance the outcomes through successful change management.

Plan to Develop or Enhance a Culture of Safety

The plan will reinforce the safety culture by adopting standard handoff communication practices, using the evidence-based methods, e.g., SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation). SBAR is a systematic system that enables effective communication of all the relevant information, which makes the process of handoff more efficient and minimizes the chance of miscommunication (Mijares, 2021). The plan will reduce the risk of medication errors, which in most cases can be attributed to inadequate communication of information by taking into account the importance of being clear, brief, and accurate in the transition of the patient. The most important elements of the plan are the leadership support, staff training via simulation, implementation of electronic SBAR templates on the EHR, and the setting of clear performance expectations (Mijares, 2021). The plan fosters interdisciplinary interaction, responsibility, and psychological safety through staff involvement in protocol formulation and feedback systems. In addition, inclusivity should be encouraged by using equity-based education and bilingual materials so that every employee will feel at ease when participating in the handoff process, making it a concerted effort to provide care safety.

Assumptions on Which the Plan is Based

The plan presupposes that the efficient commitments of leadership are the key to a successful culture transformation in safety and quality. It is premised on the fact that the staff will be open to standardized tools such as SBAR because it has been found to reduce errors and miscommunication in past studies. The logic of the plan is that the priority of the patients transfers will be clear communication in concise and precise information to minimize the number of medication errors, ensure that it does not miss the treatment is not missed, and improve the safety of the patients. The program should be promoted by executive leaders; they must be available to provide the right resources and training to all the personnel (Day et al., 2021). In addition, a non-punitive reporting culture will also be significant in motivating employees to report near misses and mistakes that will be used in the ongoing learning. The decrease in the rate of readmissions, the decrease in the number of sentinel events, and patient satisfaction are several outcome measures that will be monitored as indicators of success in the plan. Data-driven feedback loops will be created to offer a constant assessment of the quality of the attained communication enhancement and strategy adjustments.

Existing Organizational Functions, Processes, and Behaviors Affecting Quality and Safety

Some of the most significant organizational processes that influence quality and safety are communication practices, leadership involvement, and standardised processes such as patient handoffs. It is also directly connected to the improvement of patient safety, as a deficiency in the consistency of communication handoff, particularly during the transfer of patients, leads to loss of medications, treatment, and results in delayed interventions to the patient. Using the case of healthcare organizations, they use the handoffs that could be verbal or memory-driven, rather than formal handoffs, like SBAR, which results in lost information exchanges (Mijares, 2021). Additional indications are that the behavior of the leader (or lack of the same) is vital in the case of safety. The degree of error and employee participation is significantly less in the high-performance companies in which a safety culture is being encouraged with the help of a definite leadership commitment.

 Moreover, the fact that the organization is apparently involved in perpetual training, feedback, and resource allocation is a significant addition to the fact that the safety guidelines are observed at all times. Also, the current documentation system is frequently too dependent on verbal reports and memory, which will make the omissions or misinformation more likely (Mijares, 2021). Care team-to-electronic health record (EHR) system integration is also an additional barrier to the effectiveness of transitions, with communication silos that undermine continuity of care and endanger patient safety.

In addition, hierarchical communication trends and a deficit in the participation of staff in making decisions are the organizational behaviors that harm safety outcomes. Frontline employees will be reluctant to express their complaints or ideas because they are afraid of being reprimanded or disapproved, as they do not feel that they have the authority. This deters reporting near misses and errors, which restricts the organization to learn from them and implementing required changes. The safety culture is also undermined by inappropriate training and the lack of focus on interprofessional collaboration (Rawlinson et al., 2021). Such actions and lack of engagement reduce the creation of a transparent, accountable atmosphere with a focus on quality care. Consequently, to change these functions and behaviors into strengths that facilitate a high-reliability organization, more inclusive communication practices, the encouragement of psychological safety, and the reinforcement of continuous feedback loops are necessary.

 Areas of Uncertainty

There are various aspects of uncertainty regarding the adoption of standardized communication tools such as SBAR. The biggest question is how to incorporate the SBAR or such an instrument in the existing Electronic Health Record (EHR) system so that the working process is not made more challenging and that the usability is not interfered with (Elliott-Mainwaring, 2024). It is also of concern that the frontline personnel will be flexible enough to adapt to such new systems under the pressure of their working schedules. In addition, the cultural and language barriers between the staff and the patients themselves could predetermine the success of the handoff communication, yet this has not been widely studied (Brownie and Chalmers, 2025). Finally, the sustainability of standardized practices of handoff is not evident as to the long-term solutions and practices of healthcare organizations with high turnover or organizations with difficulties in training and feedback.

Current Outcome Measures Related to Quality and Safety

The present quality and safety outcome measures comprise the decreased number of medication errors, less frequent sentinel events, lower readmission rates, and increased patient satisfaction. These practices are included in the process of assessing the overall performance of the health institutions and their compliance with patient safety. Medical errors are typically tracked regarding the reporting of incidents, the chart review, and medication reconciliation procedures (Tariq et al., 2024). The sentinel events are the unexpected deaths or severe injuries, and the security reporting systems provided by the hospitals, and other investigations reporting systems on sentinel events.

The performance of discharge planning and care transition is measured by readmission rates, and patient satisfaction is estimated with the assistance of different surveys, including the one called HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems), which identifies the quality of general care, organization, and communication level (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2025). The collected outcome measures help organizations to understand the aspects that require improvement, changes in procedures/protocols, and compliance with safety standards.

Strengths and Weaknesses of These Outcome Measures

These outcome measures have a strength in the fact that they can give quantifiable information that directly indicates the quality of care and safety of the patients. As an example, the grades of medication errors and sentinel events would give an immediate insight into the efficiency of the clinical practices and patient safety arrangements. The readmission rates can be employed to represent the issues in the care transition, and the patient satisfaction scores can be regarded as valuable feedback concerning the issue of the patient experience (Dhaliwal and Dang, 2024). However, these measures of the results have their major disadvantages. The sentinel events and medication errors are also not reported fully because they are afraid of the possibility of being reprimanded, or they might not have documented the information properly. Even though the readmission rates are very informative, they are also influenced by other external factors, including the social determinants of health, which are mostly out of the control of the healthcare system. Patient satisfaction surveys, however, might not be very valid, as not all patients will answer them, or the patient will have a different perception of the services they received.

Steps Needed to Achieve Improved Outcomes

The initial step that should be undertaken to reach better results is to standardize patient handoff communication with the help of such tools as SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation). This will guarantee a constant transfer of all essential information during patient transfer and minimise the possibility of error, and promote the safety of the patients. The second one is to engage the entire leadership levels to demonstrate the interest in quality and safety (Mijares, 2021). The leadership must be able to drive the necessary resources, to educate employees, and to create an example of safe conduct. The third one is to inculcate the culture of open communication and open the staff to report mistakes and close calls without being punished in any way. This facilitates learning and enhancement. The fourth is to employ repeated training of instructions on how to communicate, clinical practices, and safety measures (Kompa et al., 2021). The employees are supposed to possess knowledge and skills that would implement the best practices. Finally, there will be the significance of continuous monitoring and gathering of information to verify progress. The comparison of the results, including readmission, sentinel event, and patient satisfaction, will help the organization to identify the effectiveness of the changes and redefine the strategies, respectively. All these measures create a comprehensive system according to which the areas of patient safety and quality care can be improved, and these changes can be maintained in the future.

Assumptions on Which the Plan is Based

The strategy presumes that leadership involvement is critical in supporting culture change and safety initiatives. It assumes that the staff will be willing to install the standardized instruments like SBAR, as the results revealed that the standardized instruments reduce the problem of communication errors and have a positive influence on patient outcomes. Another assumption is that it will be the non-punitive environment that will prompt the process of reporting and learning mistakes (Kiptulon et al., 2024). The other assumption made in the plan is the fact that the best practices will be reinforced through continuous training, besides feedback. In addition, it assumes the presence of continuous observation and measurement of the results to provide something to carry out to enhance strategies and sustain them. These assumptions lie in the manner of improvement of patient safety and organizational culture.

Future Vision for Developing and Sustaining a Culture of Quality and Safety

The vision of the organization in the future will be a place where quality and safety are highly integrated into all areas of patient care, and standardized communication tools such as SBAR are smoothly assimilated. The strong safety culture of this vision also implies that the frontline providers and leaders involved in providing services to patients actively contribute to the enhancement of patient outcomes (Mijares, 2021). The nurse leader fits such a niche prominently in the process of developing such a culture, in that he or she plays both the role of a champion and facilitator. They will justify evidence-based practice, establish an atmosphere of openness, and make sure that the team members present their safety issues. Nursing leadership will be the first to lead the change through offering regular education, supplying the staff members with resources, and being accountable in leadership. This culture, in the long run, will be converted to a higher patient safety outcome, fewer medication errors, fewer sentinel events, and higher patient satisfaction. Such a culture of safety is going to be sustained by the organization with the assistance of constant feedback, data-driven decision-making, and commitment to constant improvements, and the environment will be defined by the high-quality care, which will not be an exception, but the rule.

Opportunities for Interprofessional Collaboration

A culture of quality and safety is essential, and interprofessional collaboration is paramount in strengthening the culture. The role of nurses, physicians, pharmacists, as well as all the other medical professionals, should be to create and master the universal models of communication like SBAR (Davis et al., 2023). Their cooperation of their professional experience will contribute to ensuring that the transfer of patients is effective, correct, and without trouble. An example of this is that physicians and nurses can collaborate to identify some of the pitfalls that occur during patient transition in terms of communication, and the pharmacists can provide a hint of how medication reconciliation can be achieved. Moreover, the interprofessional staff of the quality improvement teams will be able to work together to track patient outcomes, create trends, and take corrective measures. It is also possible to give joint training sessions during which the various healthcare workers will be taught how to effectively communicate and respond to issues relating to safety as a team. Not only can this participatory strategy improve the care of the patients, but it will also increase the determination by the organization to adopt a safety culture.

Persuasive Argument for Developing or Enhancing a Culture of Safety.

To achieve better patient outcomes and guarantee long-term success, the culture of safety in the organization should be developed or improved. With the culture of safety, the incidence of adverse events such as medication errors and sentinel events is reduced, as well as openness, faith, and collaboration among the health professionals. The implementation of identical handoff communication tools, such as SBAR, will streamline the transfer and briefing of the important patient data and reduce the possible amount of errors during the transfers to a minimum. In this case, as leaders of the nursing department, we would be the first to undertake this change in terms of facilitating these practices, providing the staff with the means that it is necessary to undergo training, and creating a culture in which patient safety would be the priority. This way, the nurses will be capable of establishing an organization that carries out high-quality care regularly and becomes the leader in the sphere of patient safety (Kiptulon et al., 2024). The numbers are self-explanatory: the greater the organization is concerned with safety, the fewer readmission cases it experiences, the higher the patient satisfaction levels, and the cases that could be avoided. To achieve the long-term health existence of the organization and people it serves, we must get up and take action now and integrate these ideas of safety into our daily operations.

Importance of Key Issues

The major themes that highlight the necessity of this plan are the risk of harming patients because of insufficient communication and the necessity of standardized practices in the case of patient handoffs. Research has determined that lack of effective communication is among the key causal factors of medical errors that have negatively led to increased morbidity, mortality, and patient dissatisfaction (Tariq et al., 2024). With the management of these problems, we have a direct influence on the results of patient safety and care. Additionally, a high safety culture enhances staff burnout, job satisfaction is encouraged, and a collaborative working environment is offered, which must be a key component of a successful healthcare organization.

Anticipating and Responding to Objections.

Others might resist the initial adoption of the standardized communication tools or cultural shift by arguing that it will require the use of time and resources to conduct training. Although this is a legitimate concern, the results greatly surpass the capital outlay. It has been shown in research that through the use of standardized communication, there would be zero cases of error and inefficiencies that would save time and resources in the long run (Hoxha et al., 2024). The rest will be interested in knowing what will become of cultural changes will be sustainable. However, though the culture of safety can be integrated into the organizational values under the influence of an active role in the leadership process, constant education, and an open feedback system, it may be achieved. Ultimately, this is an obligatory and valuable task since it may potentially lead to a more positive patient outcome, reduced liability, and increased staff morale.

Conclusion

 Leadership is essential to the successful planning and implementation of change in healthcare organizations. By constructing a common vision, a culture of collaboration, and a patient safety/quality care-oriented setting, nurse leaders can introduce the desirable changes, which may have a positive impact on the outcomes of the patients, along with the members of the staff. Leaders can create the viability of a safety and excellence culture by implementing proper planning approaches, maintaining constant communication, and wanting to become lifelong learners. Not only are the patient outcomes going to be better, but an informed and active workforce is also going to be produced as a result, which in the long term benefits the healthcare system itself.