Identification of Organizational Problem: Lack of Interdisciplinary Collaboration at University of Miami Hospital

The Organizational Problem 

Contextual Basis 

The University of Miami Hospital installed a new EHR that was supposed to improve organizational performance. However, the tack of collaboration and communication between the IT manager, the directors, and the network administrators led to an unsuccessful transition to the new EHR system. The poor relationship between nurses and the IT department also contributed to the failure to easily learn and use the new system. The leader should have communicated to the IT manager and also created an environment for feedback to allow proper training and use of the novel system. Post-operation patient-care is very significant and failure in EHR could lead to harm to patients. The organizational problem led to the failure to meet the quality requirements on patient safety. Patients safety require that healthcare facility and organizations focus on interdisciplinary collaboration. 

Organizational Challenges 

The hospital has experienced a rough time since the installment of a new EHR which posed risks to patients’ safety in the hospital. EHR is a very important element in the hospital majorly on the surgical flow. Medication allocations, patient care procedures, lab results in addition to diagnostic results, patient allergies, infections, sepsis risks, and any other important information about the patients is recorded in the EHR. Failure or delay of the EHR system may lead to the risk of the patient's safety. The new EHR was required to provide an efficient and simple interface for nurses in the hospital. Though this was important, the need to improve profits required limitation of costs. Also, the organization failed to adhere to the tenets of effective change management (Batras, Duff, & Smith , 2016). The management, therefore, was left behind in the selection of EHR systems and expert to install the new system. First, the expert did not collaborate with the IT on the ground, nurses, and management on key factors that would make the system effective. Secondly, the system experts failed to provide adequate training to the users on how to use the system. These formed the basis of system failure. 

Evidence-Based Support 

Existence of Problem 

There are various shortcomings that led to the problem. First, the network administrators were so focused on maximizing profits that they neglected inter-professional collaboration (Lynch et al, 2017). They did not include the IT manager and RN nurses’ views in choosing the best EHR system. This led to an unsuccessful transition to the hospital. The IT team failed to collaborate with the RN staff and external experts who installed the new system. The nurses too had insufficient training on the use of the new EHR due to failure by the external expert to listen and understand the needs of different staff members in the hospital (Lynch et al, 2017). All these aspects led to the unsuccessful use of the system. 

How The Problem has Been Addressed in The Past 

The leadership at University at Miami Hospital should have applied best-practices of inter-disciplinary collaboration. The solution is supported by Wilkinson (2017) and forms the foundation of team-based collaboration in learning new things. The nurses have proficiency in nursing while IT experts are good with computers. The IT manager and his team including the external expert ought to have taken the RN nurses through training and worked with them to understand their weak points, attend to them and ensure they fully know how to use the system. 

Relevant Standard 

The relevant standard in this case is the American Nursing Association (ANA) code on inter-professional collaboration and evidence-based practice. The standard states that effective collaboration enhances the integration of theory and workplace learning which in turn promotes evidence-based learning. The RN staff failed to collaborate and support the new EHR system by failure to support each other. As told by one nurse, some nurses who had a better understanding of the system did not support each other in using the system. The nurses should have worked together helping each other where necessary to allow easier learning and use of the system. 

References 

Batras, D., Duff, C., & Smith, B. J. (2016). Organizational change theory: Implications for health promotion practice. Health Promotion International , 31(1), 231–241. 

Lynch, B. M., McCance, T., McCormack, B., & Brown, D. (2017). The development of the Person-Centred Situational Leadership Framework: Revealing the being of person-centrednesss in nursing homes . Journal of Clinical Nursing , 27(1-2), 427–440. 

Wilkinson, T. J. (2017). Kolb, integration and the messiness of workplace learning. Perspectives on Medical Education , 6(3), 144–145.