Developing an Integrative Workplace Plan for Geriatric Care: A Report

This report focuses on developing an integrative workplace plan within the context of geriatric care, addressing the complex needs of the elderly population and the critical roles of caregivers, nurses, and social workers. The plan aims to establish an alternative professional practice model, building upon the Geriatric Evaluation and Management (GEM) service model. It explores the current use of the GEM model in Western Australia as a short-term rehabilitation option and highlights its effectiveness in bringing together an interprofessional team. The report emphasizes the need for a long-term care plan to complement the GEM model and proposes the integration of a shared governance model to improve patient outcomes, nurse satisfaction, and the overall work environment. The implementation strategies include internal and external partnerships, and collaborative approaches, supported by regulatory and policy influences. The report outlines how the integration of these models can enhance communication, support, and resource allocation within the workplace to improve care delivery and patient outcomes.

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Develop an integrative workplace plan
Author’s Name
Institution
Code+ Course
Professor
City and State
Date

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Develop an integrative workplace plan
Caregivers, nurses, and social workers have a herculean task to provide sufficient care for
older people. This old population has a set of multidimensional needs that will require an
effective integrative workplace plan. The plan should bring an interprofessional team together
with the primary goals of advancing their health conditions or meeting any of their needs. This
population can suffer from depression, and also be vulnerable to falls, delirium, and falls. All
these expected occurrences in geriatric care can only be substantially addressed if there is an
integrative workplace plan. Based on this context, the integrative workplace plan to be
established here aims at developing an alternative professional practice model from Geriatric
Evaluation and Management (GEM) service model. The plan will follow the following steps:
Context
In the current practice, the interprofessional team is using GEM service model to attend
to the older people (Lyons,Specht,. Karlman, and Maas, 2008, p.2018). In Western Australia, the
GEM Model of care is a rehabilitation option for older people. However, it works for a short
term, but it has been effective since it brings together an interprofessional to provide proper care
that can give the older population a strong footing in their health and day to day activities.
According to Powers, and Eubank (2018, p.85) to carry out a comprehensive geriatric
assessment, there must be an effective plan that will integrate treatment and follow-up. Clinical
geriatric care is recognizing the importance of comprehensive assessment so that the older
people are fully catered for even after they have been discharged to their homes. When patients
receiving this care stabilize, sometimes they should be discharged to their homes where geriatric
care ought to continue.

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Notably, the GEM model of care is short-term and that is to imply that another plan is
needed for long-term care. Welsh, Sherriff, and Flodgren, (2015, p.2) stress the need to offer
long-term care in order to achieve desired outcomes. The needs of the older population are many,
and therefore short-term care needs to be replaced with long-term which ideally are the objective
of professional nursing practice. Nurses have continued to demonstrate their commitment to
improving the wellness of older people residing in nursing homes. In addition, nurses excellence
in their work once they have adequate resources and time to integrate principles such as learning,
peopling, securing, valuing, envisioning, leading, promoting excellence and empowering. Since
GEM model of care is focused on offering rehabilitation interventions for a short-time, then
another model ought to be adopted.
GEM model of care is only effective if a multidisciplinary team collaborates effectively
to deliver patient care (Powers, and Eubank, 2018, p.84). Every individual involved in geriatric
care is specialized and they will handle only situations that they understand. This is to imply that
in scenarios where the home cares do not have a multidisciplinary team, effective and quality
care shall not be offered. However, to achieve proper geriatric care, what needs to develop is an
integrative workplace plan that will bring nurses and other medical practitioners together to offer
prompt and sufficient care. That is the only when the elderly patients will be attended properly,
rehabilitated so that they can regain functional abilities once more.
Outputs and enabling Actions
GEM model of care remains central in the provision of quality care to the older people.
Its output has been positive, but if it is integrated with another model like governance shared
model, it would be more effective. The primary role of the GEM model is to deliver

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rehabilitation to the patients as fast as possible. To achieve more results or outcomes, the model
needs to be backed by another one. The shared governance model integrates beliefs and values
that practitioners are mandated to embrace in their practice in order to attain quality care. As a
nursing professional model, shared governance model improves retention, satisfaction and work
environment for nurses and other professionals.
The shared governance model which in all probability can be integrated with the GEM
model is built on three fundamental perspectives such as organizational, management and
sociological. From the management perspective, professional practice requires a human resource
to be managed properly. The human resources, in this case, can be nurses working at nursing
homes to provide geriatric care to the elderly. The shared governance models were influenced by
human resource management. When managing health care workers in nursing homes, concepts
such as quality management must be taken into account in order to better work environment,
motivate employees, bolster team building and leadership.
The management perspective developed a shared governance model by defining
structural power within the care delivery systems. In geriatric care, the multidisciplinary team
needs a team leader who will exercise powers to build teams and create a vision for all the
members. When the interprofessional team in the geriatric care has work empowerment
structures such as information, resources, opportunities and support the quality of care in all
probability will improve. In essence, in the shared governance model, people vested with formal
or informal power are required to make decisions that will make care delivery effective. The
elderly patients’ health outcomes are directly influenced by the decisions made by the
multidisciplinary team that will be attending to them. This means that this team needs to be

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properly managed for it to execute its roles properly and that is why the GEM model needs to be
integrated with shared governance models.
Implementation of the model
For the implementation of the shared governance strategy alongside the GEM model,
several strategies will be employed. The multifaceted strategies will be used for the model to
work effectively. First, an internal partnership strategy will be used in which people and
departments across the nursing home will work together with the sole aim of improving their
delivery care systems. This strategy will allow specialists to engage with each other in service
delivery. The strategy will also help the multidisciplinary team identify the gaps in care delivery.
Essentially, the point is that the internal partnership strategy main objective is to bring
interprofessional team together with the purpose of improving health outcomes. Different
departments will have to pull together, collaborate and exchange crucial information to improve
the delivery of care to the elderly patients. By doing so, it will be easier to integrate the GEM
model and shared governance model as members will have a team building, cooperation, and
effective leadership.
The internal partnership will also facilitate cohort learning. In this kind of learning, the
group of individuals will pull together share ideas together, gain new insights or perspectives that
will allow them to achieve common objectives. They will build relationships or networks, which
shall be central in the delivery of geriatric care. Intrinsically, geriatric care comes with numerous
challenges and other dynamics. In such a scenario, it is fundamental that multidisciplinary teams
share ideas, build teams and learn from each other in order to adapt to changes in geriatric care.

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Apart from internal partnership strategy, external partnerships strategy can also be used
to implement the shared governance model. This model believes that care delivery systems are
intricate and require concerted efforts for older people to receive proper care. In this strategy, the
focus shall be on working with community stakeholders. In this case, the nursing home can
decide to form a committee that will foresee the implementation of shared governance. The
committee will reinforce and strengthen relationships in the multidisciplinary team.
Shared governance model will also be implemented through the collaborative strategy.
The major role of this strategy is to bring the interprofessional team together, purposefully to
achieve a common goal (Weaver, Hess, Williams, Guinta, and Paliwal, 2018, p. 11). It also
similar to the internal and external partnerships, in that, they are all pegged on teamwork or
cooperation to achieve collectively desired outcomes. In this strategy, the objective is to ensure
that community stakeholders collectively tackle health challenges facing old patients. This will
see the participants share a common agenda, foster open communication, allow the flow of
information and coordinate at every point of care delivery.
Current regulatory and policy influences
Institutional policies are the ones that are promoting the shared governance model. A
health organization is required to develop a policy that will guide nurses and other medical staff
on how to work together. Institutions are creating frameworks that will allow members to
collaborate or engage each other without prejudice or discrimination. There is also a regulation
in place that illegalizes any form of discrimination to foster collaboration among diverse teams.
In geriatric care, it is obvious that the professionals involved are diverse and equally the patients
they will be attending to are diverse. On that basis, anti-discrimination regulations will ensure

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that nurses and other medical practitioners collaborate at all times without bias or preconceptions
that can hinder collaboration.
Summary of workplace plan
Communicati
ng objectives
Employing
collaborative
strategies
Support and
resources
Meetings Success
measuremen
ts
Improvemen
t
The
workplace
plan to
introduce and
integrate
shared
governance
model with
GEM model,
will require
effective
communicatio
n of
objectives.
Internal
partnership,
external
partnerships
will be
central in the
implementati
on of the
alternative
model.
Assessing
availability of
resources so
that the
multidisciplina
ry team is able
to perform
their roles
effectively.
Holding
multidisciplina
ry meetings
will help iron
out issues or
address arising
challenges.
Measuring
success will
assess the
effectivenes
s of shared
governance
model.
Improvemen
ts will
involve
change of
strategy or
taking a
corrective
measure that
will ensure
shared
governance
enhances
geriatric
care.

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References
Lyons, S.S., Specht, J.P., Karlman, S.E. and Maas, M.L., 2008. Everyday excellence: A
framework for professional nursing practice in long-term care. Research in gerontological
nursing, 1(3), pp.217-228.
Powers, J. and Eubank, K., 2018. Geriatrics Evaluation and Management in the Veterans
Administration—An Historical Perspective. Geriatrics, 3(4), p.84.
Welsh, S.M., Sherriff, A. and Flodgren, G., 2015. The champion for improved delivery of care to
older people in long-term care settings: effects on professional practice, quality of care and
resident outcomes. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2015(11). pp 1-11.
Weaver, S.H., Hess, R.G., Williams, B., Guinta, L. and Paliwal, M., 2018. Measuring shared
governance: One healthcare system's experience. Nursing management, 49(10), pp.11-14.

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