Leadership and Healthcare: Implementation and Managing Change in Healthcare Organizations

Running head: LEADERSHIP AND HEALTHCARE
LEADERSHIP AND HEALTHCARE
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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LEADERSHIP AND HEALTHCARE
Introduction:
Implementation and managing change in healthcare organizations can prove to be
difficult and challenging if proper evidence based practices and models are not followed. This
assignment would be first depicting the case study which shows the failure of the implementation
of a new healthcare technology of EHR in the mental healthcare ward. This would also try to
analyze out the barriers that resulted in such negative feeling among the employees. With the
help of different theories, the case study would be analyzed and then proper recommendations
would be put by me accordingly.
Outline of the problem:
For a long period of time, the organization had been facing severe issues with
documentation about the records of the mental health patients. The extreme burden of work in
the psychiatric hospitals had made the nurse stressed and burned out. The effect is seen on the
documentation procedure where they are found to be missing out jotting important details about
the patient, providing incomplete information, poor handwriting issues making writing
unreadable, mistakes in the information provided and many others. Hence, the handover
procedures are becoming difficult for the delegated nurse or the nurses of the next shift as
documentation remains incomplete. They are unable to develop ideas about needs and
requirements of the mental health patients for which the care provided is not only inappropriate
or slowing down the process but also affecting the emotional stability of the mental health
patients. Hence, with the permission of the healthcare authority, I decided to implement the
electronic healthcare technologies. This is one of the innovative healthcare technologies that can
be described as the digital version of the patient’s paper chart. Studies are of the opinion that

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HER are the real-time as well as patient centered records that help in making information
available securely and instantly to the authorized users (Wellman et al. 2016). EHR has been
found to be fruitful in the mental healthcare ward not only because it helps in noting down the
treatment histories of the mental health patients but this system also goes beyond collecting
standard data about the patient in the provider’s office (Ginter et al. 2018). This system helps in
containing the medical history of the patient, note down the interventions and medication
provided, include treatment charts, results of the assessment tools and diagnoses made and
others. This system mainly helps in allowing access to the mental health nursing providers to get
access to different evidence based tools for making proper decisions about the care o the patient.
It helps in automating and streamlining the provider workflow. It has been also found that EHR
helps in effective documentation in lesser times with very few chances of missing out
information and unreadable handwriting (Thomas 2017). This information can be easily accessed
by the professionals when the patient requires to be admitted again or for follow-ups without
taking time for recollecting episodes of care from paper charts of the patient (Doppelt 2017).
However, after implementation of the technology in the healthcare organization, the employees
were seen to complain about the system showing complete lack of acceptance of the system and
rejection of the procedure in the regular services. Both the senior and junior nurses revolted
against the change and many of them were not even willing to work in the organization any
more. It was necessary for me as well as healthcare leaders to undertake immediate actions to
bring the situation under control during the change management process.
Stakeholder analysis:
Two important stakeholders were found to be uncomfortable with the change that had
been implemented. The first set of stakeholders had been the senior nurses. The senior nurses

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were of the opinion that they were successfully able to manage mental healthcare services
provided to the patients and that they did not require any new form of systems in the
organization in the present days. They were found to be entirely negative about the new change
and they were not at all ready to accept the implementation of electronic health records in the
medical healthcare ward. The other stakeholders who were also facing issues were the novice
junior nurses. They were found to be very fearful about the new technological implementation
and they feared that they would not be able to handle the machines properly. They were thereby
avoiding the use of the EHRs and were found to be more comfortable with the documentation
procedures as well. Another stakeholder who was also seen to face uncertainty was the financial
body. The people of the financing and budget allocating ward were apprehensive. They were of
the opinion that as the healthcare funding systems is facing difficulty in trying to meet the needs
of so many patients within the limited funds already, this technology would result in additional
pressure on the funding system of the organization. However, the healthcare leaders and higher
authorities were supportive of the decision as they felt that this system could help out in bringing
positive changes in the organization with patient receiving timely and quality care with lesser
chances of delay due to improper documentation and also reduce the chances of errors occurring
in treatment of mental health patients due to lack of information.
Challenges that were observed after detailed research:
In order to help in successful implementation of a change and enabling stakeholders to
accept the change, it is indeed important for the leaders to identify the negative impacts that are
perceived by the employees. It is also important for the leaders to identify the main barriers that
are faced by the employees in accepting the new changes in the system (Hollis et al. 2015).
Therefore, I had undertake an observational analysis along with other nursing managers and