Health Systems and Change: Communicating Change as a Leader Report

This report examines the implementation of the Australian Hospital Patient Experience Question Set (AHPEQS) within a hospital setting, focusing on the role of a departmental manager in leading change. The report highlights the importance of patient feedback and stakeholder engagement in improving service quality. It discusses the challenges associated with change management, such as resistance and funding limitations, and proposes strategies for overcoming them, including the use of the Kurt Lewin Force Field Model and transformational leadership. The report emphasizes the need for effective communication, training, and empathy among healthcare staff to enhance patient satisfaction and improve the overall healthcare environment. It also suggests innovative solutions, such as mobile applications, to reduce patient waiting times. Furthermore, the report underscores the significance of addressing burnout among healthcare professionals and promoting a patient-centered care approach. The report concludes with a call for the development of interpersonal skills and professional competencies within the healthcare team, to ensure positive patient experiences, and to achieve improved outcomes as reflected in patient surveys.

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COMMUNICATING CHANGE AS A LEADER
by Student’s Name
Class/Course/Code
Professor’s Name
University/School
Australia
Date

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Communicating Change as a Leader
For the better service provision to the patients in the hospitals of Australia,
Australian Hospital Patient Experience Question Set (AHPEQS) is used as a survey to
record the feedback from the patients who come in the hospital. Hospital administration
continuously keeps on getting feedback from the patients and work on those areas
which need improvement to provide better services. When new changes are
implemented, some resistant may be seen but the effective managers know how to
handle the process of change and how to lead the change process in the organization
(NGANG, 2019). Considering the case of Calvary Public Hospital, it is important for the
administrative department to take patients and their families as the key stakeholders
supporting their service quality. Like other hospitals, it is found that approximately 10%
patients across Australia wait for more than approximately a year in their life to seek
relevant care practices.
To improve individual care standards, it is important for the hospital
management to support their care standards considering the problems of their
stakeholder (families and patients) among which waiting time seems to be the most
relevant one. It is also found in survey report that waiting time increases health related
damage to people reducing the access to community health services resulting in poor
outcomes for patients (Lu et al., 2018). It is believed by the management of hospital
(considering the findings from the survey) that lack of suitable funding increases the
number of challenges for the managers to ensure quality and minimize the issues which
is faced by the selected stakeholder at this point. Offering the required care standard
without patients waiting at hospital need more workers and professional staff which

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increase the pressure on Commonwealth and State Budget, however, to support the
solutions to this problem, it has become essential for management to seek funding from
its financial stakeholders accomplishing its targets successfully without affecting its
service standards (Mohammed et al., 2014).
It has been found in researches that approximately 6% of the total hospital
admissions in Australia are potentially preventable, it is important for the management
of the hospital to use their bed availability smartly reducing the waiting time for patients.
It can used as an efficient strategy to reduce the high prevalence areas following its
targeted areas improving its service standards for the targeted stakeholders and reduce
the severity of patient’s condition (Jerant, at al, 2019). This can be improved by supporting
quality-management processes to provide information to hospital allowing the
management to analyze the incidents related to waiting time, it also helps the nursing
staff to provide better education, and support related to their health conditions. This
further promote patient-centered care approach within the hospital facility accomplishing
their quality service targets successfully. However, despite changes, there is always
some room for improvement of care standards and this cannot be achieved overnight,
but the management of hospital is required to support hospital acquired diagnosis to
look for problem and allocate relevant strategies to overcome the issue successfully
(NGANG, 2019).
Change management in the health care sector is of great importance because
if the change is not focused, the hospitals will lose their competitive advantage following
the satisfaction of the patient according to stakeholder development using relevant
strategies. Considering the nature of problem faced by the hospital at this point, it is

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important for the management to support change management implementation using
the data extracted from the survey from the patient (Gopee, N. & Galloway, J., 2017).
According to the required change management approach within the considered
case hospital, it is important for the management to support the change using a
particular framework for effective change. Kurt Lewin Force Field Model is highly
regarded for this purpose, it involves breaking eth status quo and after melting the ice in
the hospital, unfreezing is done to scrape out the outdated processes and the new state
is acquired in which change is implemented and freeze again to get a new state and
everyone makes efforts in this process, resistance is controlled at its most by the
managers (Ginter, Duncan & Swayne, 2018). It will be beneficial for the hospital
management to look for innovative solutions to resolve the issues its stakeholder is
currently facing. For example, with mobile application to assign different time slots to
patients can help the management reduce their waiting time. In this way, patients will be
able to look for no-rush time to visit their required ER or doctor in case there is no
emergency (Hayes, 2018).
For the successful implementation of the change process and to break the
status quo, effective leadership is mandatory without the help of which change
management will not be done appropriately. The transformational leadership style will
be best suited to bring changes when the change is related to the processes and
training of behavior molding of the groups is required to implant a new change in the
organizations//hospitals. Using this approach, the management of the hospital will be
able to identify the loopholes within their processes so that it can be fulfilled with
relevant strategies such as the above discussed one (Buil, Martínez and Matute, 2019).

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In the unit, the transformational leadership style will be adopted to bring changes
because the group dynamics need to be positive for the positive patient experience. To
make the hospital process effective for the generation of Australian Hospital Patient
Experience Question Set (AHPEQS), it is important to put the whole focus on the
individuals and the groups who can make the patient experience positive.
In addition, to reduce waiting time for its management, it will be beneficial for
the management to prepare a team composed of nurses and the junior doctors
responsible to bring change and to make the patient service better so that they can be
providing positive feedback and the healthcare environment of the hospital will get
better among the competitors. They will be asked a question and their inputs will be
highly valuable for the results generation because the discussion with them will provide
positive results and they will feel confident to be working with the teams. As the
stakeholders in the unit are the physicians (Junior doctors) and nurses, their training is
mandatory because the new research and effective collaboration among groups will be
providing promising results. If the doctors are provided training in which they
communicate effectively with the patients and patients feel comfortable with them, this
will create customers satisfaction (Boissy et al., 2016).
Doctors and healthcare staff are advised to develop empathy because this
increases the satisfaction of the patients and they provide positive feedback about eth
services provided. So, there is an effective need to make the doctors and healthcare
staff better and equipped with the pieces of training which focus on the development of
soft skills and to communicate effectively with the patients (Walsh et al., 2019). The best
clinical practices for the hospital management will focus on improving its environment

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and the patient will leave after providing good feedback about their experiences while
staying at the hospital.
The burnout among the healthcare professionals is a major cause of burnout
and it will be focused to make them motivated and equipped with the needed skills that
they get at work. This will make them empowered and they will take it constructively to
make the patients satisfied with quality services. This will also be made compulsory for
their career growth and also to make them aware that if the quality is reflected in their
services, they will be moved to the next moves of their career. So, patient feedback is
necessary to be positive (Panagioti et al., 2018). If healthcare staff will listen carefully to
the patients, it will also be a positive sign to get the positive feedback of the patient by
serving them with the appropriate service which they want to get from the healthcare
providers (Jerant et al., 2018).
Healthcare staff needs to take care of the social, cultural, behavioral and
demographic difference. This distinction will be helpful because the healthcare sector
needs to learn these differences for the sake of patient satisfaction and to generate
positive feedbacks in the surveys (Batbaatar et al., 2016).
The team will be briefed about the importance of all these aspects and they will
be encouraged to discuss their issues and seek the solutions for the problems they face
at the workplace. The transformational leadership role will assist them and the teams
will be asked to improve the level of understanding for the growth of their professions
and the positive experience feedback that they get through the surveys.
To sum up, it is asserted that the customers experience survey is conducted at
the hospital and the change management process is implemented in which the Kurt

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Lewin’s Force Field Model and Group Dynamics Model is focused along with the
transformational leadership approach and a meeting is called in which the group of
nurses and doctors are advised and addressed to develop interpersonal skills and to
develop their professional competencies to get better patient satisfaction which will be
reflected through the positive patient experience survey.

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References
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Boissy, A., Windover, A., Bokar, D., Karafa, M., Neuendorf, K., Frankel, R., Merlino, J. and
Rothberg, M. (2016). Communication Skills Training for Physicians Improves Patient
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Buil, I., Martínez, E. and Matute, J. (2019). Transformational leadership and employee
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Mohammed, K., Nolan, M., Rajjo, T., Shah, N., Prokop, L., Varkey, P. and Murad, M. (2014).
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