Analysis of Health care huddles: Managing complexity to achieve high reliability Anusha Rayapati HCA 620 Introduction This article was selected as it explained and discussed the probable standardized procedure that health care organizations may have to follow for improvements in patient safety. This article explains how the inter-personal and professional relationship of different health care providers need to be maintained for better health care as explained in one of the chapters of health care management. Purpose A complexity science view implies that essential managerial strategies for high-performing health care organizations include meaningful conversations, enhanced relationships, and a learning culture. These three dimensions informed our approach to studying huddles. New theories where explored how and why huddles have been useful in health care organizations. Research Inquiry Huddles are focused gatherings of functional groups. Huddles have pervaded health care organizations in the past 10 years. Huddles have been linked to improvements in patient safety and praised for operational and teamwork benefits. How and why have huddles been useful in health care organizations? Theoretical mechanisms were explored that could connect huddles to improvements in health care quality and patient safety. A complex adaptive system (CAS) framework guided the approach. Often implemented as part of a broad quality improvement framework, health care huddles
Everyone wants a sustainable well-functioning health system (Marshall, 2011 qdt Porter-O’Grady, 2016 et al p 325). When nursing and other healthcare managers (nurse leaders) focus on increasing connections, diversity, and interactions they increase information flow and promote creative adaptation referred to as self-organization. Complexity science builds on the rich tradition in nursing that views patients and nursing care from a systems perspective (Porter-O’Grady, 2016 et al p 324 and Holden
"To continuously improve health care for the public, in collaboration with other stakeholders, by evaluating health care organizations and inspiring them to excel in providing safe and effective care of the highest quality and value” (Jointcommission.org, 2015). These requirements are regimented in the National Patient Safety Goals and are enforced via surveys and internal inspections to ensure that healthcare institutions abide by the safety mechanisms put in place to facilitate the optimal patient outcomes and environments.
‘Clear and complete communication between health care providers is a prerequisite for safe patient management. Which is a major priority of the Joint Commission's 2008 National Patient Safety Goals and long-term care (LCT). (Commission, 2008)
Patient safety one of the driving forces of healthcare. Patient safety is defined as, “ the absence of preventable harm to a patient during the process of healthcare or as the prevention of errors and adverse events caused by the provision of healthcare rather than the patient’s underlying disease process. (Kangasniemi, Vaismoradi, Jasper, &Turunen, 2013)”. It was just as important in the past as it is day. Our healthcare field continues to strive to make improvement toward safer care for patients across the country.
people with complex health care issues in terms of quality, cost and access to care (Agency for
According to Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (2014), Root Cause Analysis is an error implementation tool which identified that fall cases occur as a result of the lack of a standardized process of communication between RN’S and PCA’s at the beginning of shift and hence no care planning for high fall risk patients. “Huddles are short briefings or communication, which are designed to give frontline staff, and bedside caregivers opportunities to stay informed, review events, make and share plans for ensuring a well coordinated patient care” (Goldenhar et al, 2013). Therefore our team designed a standardized huddle, which will occur at the beginning of shift between RNs and PCAs to help in the reduction of falls.
The “Gold Practice” is a protocol to prevent Never Events from happening. According to Gitlow, 2013, reports showed that over 200,000 people were dying secondary to medical errors and acquired infection while in the hospital. In addition to this finding it indicated that one patient out of every 25 hospitals were injured by medical errors. Furthermore, an additional 6.1 million injuries were associated as a result of Never Events. Therefore, a proposal to reduce the occurrence of Never Events had to be incorporated into the hospital setting. To limit the Never Events, it required a collaboration model called “Breakthrough Series” which was developed in 2003 to provide the best practice protocols. It consisted of expert recruitment, enrollment of participating organizations and their teams, learning sessions, and action periods. The three most common Never Events are patient’s falls, pressure ulcers, and hospital acquired pneumonia. However, utilizing the “Breakthrough Series” can help reduced the three common Never Events are all controllable factors.
In recent years despite the focus on quality and safety improvements mandated for healthcare organizations, there continues to problems with maintaining and implementing the procedures. A greater emphasis related to team organization and support conditions are required for effective quality and safety collaborative efforts (Matthaeus-Kraemer, Thomas-Rueddel, Schwarzkopf, & Poidinger, 2015). The measuring of quality healthcare has increased because of the competition between organizations causing consumers to remain loyal to a service provider they perceive provides higher quality and safety care (CITE). The impact of deficient quality care is greater than the loss of a customer but the ability to attract new customers (CITE).
Healthcare organizations of the past century were designed from 17th century ideology of the universe based on the teachings of Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Francis Bacon. This was a predictable and reliable world based on the viewpoint that organizations are machines and as individuals, we are merely cogs in a wheel, fulfilling a role and playing our part. However, this understanding has be eradicated by the idea that people and organizations are fluid, dynamic and living organisms. Newton 's “clockwork universe,” in which big problems can be broken down into smaller ones, analyzed, and solved by rational deduction, has strongly influenced both the practice of medicine and the leadership of organizations. But the machine metaphor lets us down badly when no part of the equation is constant, independent, or predictable. The new science of complex adaptive systems states that in order to cope with escalating complexity in health care we must abandon linear models, accept unpredictability, respect (and utilize) autonomy and creativity, and respond flexibly to emerging patterns and opportunities (Plsek & Greenhalgh, 2001).
Complexity theory is an approach that may be utilized to understand, study, and manage the complexity of a health care setting. Furthermore, complexity science provides the ability to evaluate the interrelatedness of the elements of a system and their influence and relationships with one another. Utilizing complexity theory, it is clear that the connections of a systems entities must be considered as they tend to complicate outcomes due to the nature of their unpredictability. However, some complex systems display characteristics of emergence within the chaos of complexity resulting in patterns that appear predictable (Kannampallil, Schauer, Cohen, & Patel, 2011).
Health care professionals are spending more time in meetings and enjoying them less. Along with the substantial allocation of financial capital is the more extensive expenditure of human capital. If I were to sum up in two words the overriding perception participants in health care organizations have of their business meetings, it would be time sink. A time sink is an activity that absorbs time, and takes more time than it is worth (wasting time). Regretfully, time sink seems to resonate all too well with health care professionals. As defines a time sink, meetings are perceived as consuming unbounded amounts of time, usually with little benefit. When I have provided the definition of a time sink to health care personnel who attend meetings
Quint Studer founded Studer Group in 2000 (About Our Founder, n.d.). His prior experience as a teacher, department director, senior vice president and president of a hospital helped him build a platform for creating healthcare leadership tools, techniques and systems that aim to improve organizational performance and-most importantly-patient care (About Our Founder, n.d.). Improving a hospital's performance across all indicators can seem like a daunting challenge. But Quint Studer, founder and CEO of Studer Group, says findings from Studer Group's Learning Lab of nearly 800 healthcare organizations across the country indicate that it is possible (Dunn, 2011). In fact, three simple changes in the way you communicate with employees and patients
Which models of collaboration have had the most positive influence on internal communities in health care organizations? Support your answer.
Teamwork also reduces issues that lead to burnout. No longer is one person responsible for the patient’s health. Today, an entire team of health workers comes together to coordinate a patient’s well-being. Health teams help break down hierarchy and centralized power of health organizations, giving more leverage to health workers. Teamwork is centered on solid communication therefore patients and their families sometimes feel more at ease and report they accept treatments and feel more satisfied with their health care. Health workers are also found to be more satisfied with their work. A study found that health care workers who go through successful team building efforts are more satisfied with their work.
Issues related to a lack of patient safety have been going on for a lot of years now. Throughout the first decade of the 21st century, there has been a national emphasis on cultivating patient safety. Patient safety is a global issue, that touches countries at all levels of expansion and is one of the nation's most determined health care tests. According to the Institute of Medicine (1999), they have measured that as many as 48,000 to 88,000 people are dying in U.S. hospitals each year as the result of lapses in patient safety. Estimates of the size of the problem on this are scarce particularly in developing countries; it is likely that millions of patients worldwide could suffer disabling injuries or death every year due to unsafe medical care. Risk and safety have always been uninterruptedly been significant concerns in the hospital industry. Patient safety is a very much important part of our health care system and it really