Gaps in Practice of Clinical Coordinators in Hospital Settings: A Case Study Analysis

Running head: NURSING
Nursing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1NURSING
Introduction
The main duty of a clinical coordinator under the hospital settings to increase the overall
quality of care while decreasing the chances of error. Increase in the overall quality of care
helps to improve the overall health outcome of the patients while reducing the length of stay
in the hospital along with a decrease in the overall cost of care (Ignatavicius and Workman
2015). Integrating the urgent requirement of the emergency surgery is one of the most
common demands under the hospital settings. Though such emergency requisition increases
the level of stress among the healthcare professionals, but at the end of the day, proper tea
work, use of proper effective communication skills and critical thinking approach helps to
handle such urgent requisition effectively (Ignatavicius and Workman 2015). The following
will help to highlight gaps in practice of the clinical coordinators leading a errors in the
effective management under hospital settings. The paper is based on the critical analysis of a
case study of a clinical coordinator who is asked to handle an emergency requisition of a
surgery. The analysis of the role of the clinical coordinator will be undertaken based on the
time-management skills, critical thinking skills, prioritization of care and leadership skills.
Lack of proper communication skills
The scenario stated above, highlighted that the clinical co-ordinator (CC) lacked proper
communication skills and thus creating complex management issues. During the morning
shift, when the CC joined the work, he or she received two phone calls. First call came from a
vascular surgeon stating that a patient with a suspected case of ruptured AAA needs urgent
surgery and an estimated time of arrival was 20 to 40 minutes. After 10 minutes, Cc received
another call from emergency intake officer stated a patient is arriving in the emergency
within 30 minutes with ischaemic bowel complications. This highlights the gap in the
effective communication skills. Foronda, MacWilliams and McArthur (2016) stated that
effective communication skills are an important aspect of nursing practice. Gluyas (2015)
further highlighted that use of effective communication helps to increase the level of patients’
safety by reducing the chances of unwanted errors. Thus when the nursing professionals
received the second call from the emergency intake officer, the CC might have enquired
about the age of the person and the place from where the person is been communicated in the
hospital and the doctor who is referring the patient to the hospital. In this way, the CC might
have obtained a clue in order to understand whether both the patient is same. According to

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the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQHC) (2016), the
errors in communication of lack of effective communication is one of the major contributor
behind care related error under the hospital sentinel settings. It is also the common cause
behind the complaints raised against Australian healthcare system. The use of the prompt
enquiry by a nursing professional helps in the effective management of the prospective
emergencies that are common under the hospital settings.
The complex management issue and its relation with gap in proper communication skill can
also be highlighted in the domain of allocating proper operation room to the upcoming or
emergency patients. For example, there are 6 different operation suits in the hospital of which
only the cardiac unit was free and that too after 1300 hour or 1 pm. AAA is referred to as
symptomatic abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) and it leads to number of symptoms like
abdominal pain or limb ischemia. Chaikof et al. (2018) stated that the majority of the
patients’ who are suffering from AAA rupture, needs urgent surgery for subsequent repair
and the same has been referred by the vascular surgeon as well. According to the code of
conduct 3 of Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) (2019) it is the duty of the
nursing professional to respond in a timely manner in order to uplift the health and well-being
of the patients. However, the CC nurse showed gap in practice in this domain as she failed to
respond in time manner for surgery room allocation. Code of conduct 5, effective
communication is important in order to develop a proper nursing care plan and to increase the
effective collaboration with the allied nursing professionals or the other healthcare
professionals of the multidisciplinary team (NMBA 2019). The CC nurse was rostered with
nurse unit manager (NUM) and thus effectively communicating the news of sudden
admission of two new patients might have helped in fetching effective ideas for man
management and allocation of the operation room.
Lack of proper leadership skills
According to Sfantou et al. (2017), effective leadership in nursing profession is important for
strengthening the quality and overall integration of care in the healthcare domain. Quality of
care is an important element for achieving high level of productivity while reducing the
chances of errors. The case study highlighted here showed gap in effective leadership skills
by the CC leading to the generation of the unwanted confusion and decrease in the overall
quality of care. The prospective AAA rupture patient who is being admitted for the surgery
will require assistance from the vascular health care professionals. However, the morning