Date of Graduation

Winter 12-12-2020

Document Type

Project

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

College/School

School of Nursing and Health Professions

Department/Program

Nursing

Program

Executive Leader DNP

First Advisor

Dr mary Lynne Knighted

Second Advisor

Dr Juli Maxworthy

Abstract

Problem: Over the last 30 years, clinical communication methodologies in healthcare have evolved to become such disparate systems that they lead to confusion, wasted time, and clinician dissatisfaction. The Joint Commission (2016) reports up to 78% of sentinel events in hospitals are linked to communication failures, which have obvious implications for hospital systems in the quality and safety of their current communication systems.

Context: The purpose of this project was to determine the effectiveness of implementing a unified clinical communication technology platform in an acute care hospital setting and to make recommendations from that implementation to the organization’s larger health system. Its purpose was also to determine if the creation of a clinical communication technology implementation guide for nurse leaders would positively impact future implementations of such platforms throughout the larger health system.

Interventions: This project introduced smartphone communication technologies to inpatient nurses and other clinicians in a 352-bed hospital in California, which is part of a larger 39-hospital, multi-state system. Analysis was then performed by collecting data before and after implementation of the clinical communication platform. While not part of the original plan, elements of the platform were subsequently deployed to help with clinical communication during the height of the SARs CoV (COVID-19) pandemic, and this implementation was also analyzed for the project. The intention was also to determine if the creation of a clinically focused implementation guide for clinical leaders could positively impact the application of such a communication platform throughout the larger health system.

Measures: Measures in this study included productivity, efficiency, quality of care, communication, and staff satisfaction with the newly implanted technology. Measurement regarding the usefulness of the implementation guide was gauged through the perceived satisfaction of nurse leaders who reviewed the guide and gave feedback.

Results: Mixed results were realized from the implementation of this technology, but the work yielded valuable information for future implementations within the organization. Frontline staff and physician satisfaction with the whole platform was low, but leadership satisfaction with the elements implemented for COVID-19 was high. For the implementation guide, nurse leaders gave valuable feedback and determined it would be a highly useful document for facility implementation leads in the future.

Conclusion: The implementation of new clinical communication technology and methodologies has the opportunity to improve productivity, efficiency, quality of care, communication, and staff satisfaction, but only if barriers to implementation are mitigated before, during, and immediately after go-live. A comprehensive implementation guide for nurse leaders can be the tool designed specifically to mitigate these barriers and prepare nurse leaders and facilities for the new technology and associated workflow changes that accompany the technology.

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