Capella FPX 4005 Assessment 2

Name

Capella university

NURS-FPX4005 Nursing Leadership: Focusing on People, Processes, and Organizations

Prof. Name

Date

Interview Summary

The nursing professional, Bridget, works at Mercy General Hospital (MGH) in Columbus, Ohio. She has been working there for over six years since she started her employment, and she now works as a charge nurse in the medical-surgical unit. Her responsibilities at Mercy General Hospital consist of supervising patient healthcare and assisting nurses at the bedside while connecting hospital staff and ensuring patients receive proper discharge plans. 

In the interview, Bridget pointed out that a continuous problem at the medical center involved inadequate handover communication between nurses who shifted from night to day shifts. She explained that inconsistent communication often led to incomplete patient updates, missed critical information (such as pending labs or medication changes), and ultimately, delays in patient care.

Leadership implemented the standardized handoff tools called SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation), yet they did not achieve consistent use because there were no active monitoring systems. She also mentioned that, as a theory, the organization supports interdisciplinary collaboration, yet this support remains inconsistent in real practice. The process of interdisciplinary rounding happens at our facility, but Bridget reported observing significant communication failures that occur during shift handovers. The effective work of multidisciplinary teams can be attributed to strong leadership, which holds members responsible and advances open inter-team communication. 

The gathering process included a semi-structured interview format with predetermined open-ended questions and room to follow emerging subjects during the conversation. Medical facilities can obtain authentic and detailed healthcare insights using this approach because it delivers reliability and flexibility. Healthcare assessments utilize semi-structured interviews because they enable participants to provide in-depth responses without deviating from the essential interview goals (Altabtabaei & Alhuwail, 2023).

Issue Identification 

Patient handovers at Mercy General Hospital demonstrate ineffective communication, the main problem discovered in this interview. An evidence-based interdisciplinary care delivery model would be most suitable for the issue. It is because handoff success depends on multiple healthcare disciplines, such as nurses, physicians, case managers, and allied health professionals, requiring timely, precise patient information to coordinate care (Nuernberger et al., 2025). Multiple studies have proven that standardized handoff tools like SBAR and I-PASS help lower adverse events while improving patient safety (Nuernberger et al., 2025). Incremental accountability arises when multiple team members design and enforce handoff procedures because this approach enhances collaboration while ensuring complete cross-shift distribution of critical patient information.

Change Theories That Could Lead to an Interdisciplinary Solution

Lewin’s Change Management Model represents an appropriate framework to improve patient handoff communication because it consists of the stages of unfreezing, changing, and refreezing (Harrison et al., 2021). Staff members recognize the healthcare hazards and wasted resources that result from inadequate handoff communication through presentations of previous incidents during meetings like the one led by a charge nurse. The changing phase calls for an interdisciplinary team to implement SBAR or I-PASS standard handoff protocols through training and pilot programs so nurses, physicians, and case managers can jointly practice this structured handoff method through simulation exercises. 

Thirdly, the new communication practices become standard operational procedures through Policies and regular audits to solidify them into daily routines. Leaders can implement SBAR checklists into electronic health records (EHR) and then conduct monthly audits for compliance assessment. This issue requires Lewin’s model as its main framework because it demonstrates how staff need comprehensive change preparation while offering transformational leadership, which leads to reinforcing new behaviors to improve handoffs between different medical fields. The study by Harrison et al. (2021) supports the use of Lewin’s Model in healthcare change management, as it aligns with the need for comprehensive staff preparation, better leadership, highlighting its frequent application and effectiveness in similar contexts.

Leadership Strategies That Could Lead to an Interdisciplinary Solution

Transformational Leadership combined with the TeamSTEPPS® (Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety) model presents itself as a valuable leadership strategy to develop a solution for improving communication during patient handoffs (Kuriyan et al., 2020). Through motivational leadership, teams accept shared objectives focusing on enhanced handoff communication for patient safety enhancement. The leader should create specific handoff communication practices while enabling multidisciplinary contributions and promoting recognition for improved handoff quality. 

Implementing the TeamSTEPPS® model with its communication and teamwork improvement tools (including briefs, huddles, and debriefs) would create standardized practices within interdisciplinary teams. A transformational leader guides the execution of a kickoff workshop, which includes nurse, physician, and case manager practice with standardized handoff checklists and structured team huddles. TeamSTEPPS® demonstrates high relevance by directly addressing communication gaps, accountability systems, and speech activation to solve effective handoff communication breakdowns (Kuriyan et al., 2020).

Collaboration Approaches for Interdisciplinary Teams

The healthcare field uses two established methods to improve the interprofessional transfer of patient information: SBAR (Situation-Background-Assessment-Recommendation) and IPEC Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice. Using the SBAR technique, medical staff can consistently exchange important patient data to help teams avoid careless information transmission errors. A standardized communication tool called SBAR serves the interdisciplinary team to establish consistent patient handoff information (Nuernberger et al., 2025). The exchange of real-time details between teams is possible by scheduling scheduled interdisciplinary team meetings at shift start and end. Making a team communication loop where members share and verify essential data helps prevent mistakes and ensure proper understanding. 

The established strategies help create a clear understanding and promote mutual responsibility and group work during essential patient transfer processes. The approval of patient safety protocols, team communication growth, and healthcare worker comfort in handling patient responsibility emerge from SBAR model use (Nuernberger et al., 2025). When medical teams practice IPEC Core Competencies, they build mutual respect through role understanding and proper interprofessional communication (Ansa et al., 2020). All team members following IPEC competence implementation can identify their next action responsibilities throughout handoff sessions because the system supports collective communication. MGH recognizes SBAR as the most effective solution because its structured communication framework provides a direct remedy to handoff problems. 

Conclusion

The hospital must execute a systematic interdisciplinary method to enhance patient handoff communication at MGH. Combining Lewin’s Model with transformational leadership approaches and team communication methods SBAR and TeamSTEPPS® brings consistency and teamwork while improving accountability. Employing SBAR competencies for interdisciplinary collaboration will help deliver successful care transition results. Through such implementation, the strategies benefit patient safety and enhance care delivery quality.

References

Altabtabaei, R., & Alhuwail, D. (2023). Exploring the challenges and opportunities of adopting and using telemedicine for diabetes care and management: qualitative semistructured interview study among health care providers and patients with diabetes. JMIR Human Factors, 10(1), e46324. https://doi.org/10.2196/46324 

Ansa, B. E., Zechariah, S., Gates, A. M., Johnson, S. W., Heboyan, V., & De Leo, G. (2020). Attitudes and behavior towards interprofessional collaboration among healthcare professionals in a large academic medical center. Healthcare, 8(3), 323. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8030323 

Capella FPX 4005 Assessment 2

Harrison, R., Fischer, S., Walpola, R. L., Chauhan, A., Babalola, T., Mears, S., & Le-Dao, H. (2021). Where do models for change management, improvement, and implementation meet? A systematic review of the applications of change management models in healthcare. Journal of Healthcare Leadership, 13(2), 85–108. https://doi.org/10.2147/JHL.S289176 

Kuriyan, A., Kinkler, G., Cidav, Z., Kang-Yi, C., Eiraldi, R., Salas, E., & Wolk, C. B. (2020). TeamSTEPPS to improve collaboration in school mental health: Protocol for a mixed-method hybrid effectiveness-implementation study. JMIR Research Protocols, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.2196/26567 

Nuernberger, M., Lang, S., Maass, T., Lehmann, T., Brodoehl, S., & Jan-Christoph Lewejohann. (2025). The effects of an ISOBAR-structured patient handover conversation between rescue services and emergency department staff: The COPTER trial. Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians Open, 6(1), 100011–100011. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acepjo.2024.100011 

Capella FPX 4005 Assessment 2