Healthcare: Quality Improvement Plan for Nursing Staffing Shortage

This report presents a quality improvement (QI) plan focused on addressing nursing staffing shortages in a healthcare setting. The plan outlines the formation of a QI subcommittee team, detailing member selection (CEO, medical directors, senior physicians, nursing leaders, patient representatives, and practice managers) and their rationales. It discusses potential risks of interdisciplinary teamwork, such as communication gaps and shared errors, and proposes solutions like facilitated communication sessions. The report emphasizes the importance of team buy-in, suggesting strategies like involving members in scheduling and setting SMART goals for commitment. It includes a sample meeting agenda focused on key driver models for staffing transformation and highlights the importance of assessing meeting effectiveness through data tracking and review of meeting minutes. The conclusion underscores the QI team's role in executing improvement efforts through collaboration and a shared commitment to continuous improvement, ultimately aiming to enhance patient care.

1Running head: HEALTHCARE
Health care
Name of student:
Name of university:
Author note:

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Quality improvement in healthcare settings inevitably involves efforts across multiple
disciplines and domains within the organisational setting. The sole responsibility to ensure
that quality is enhanced is upheld by the quality improvement (QI) team who strive to bring
changes in the practice within the setting (Gurses, 2016). The present paper would be based
on the process improvement plan outlined previously on the nursing staffing shortage. The
paper explains the plan for identification and onboarding the hypothetical quality
improvement (QI) subcommittee team members. It would describe the members of the team
and the rationale for selecting them, the risks of working in an interdisciplinary team and
ways to address them, and what the team needs to review before the meeting, amongst other
aspects. The consecutive section of the paper would detail the methods for getting buy-in
from the team. SMART goals would be developed for achieving the buy-in. A brief agenda
would then be developed for meeting the hypothetical team. Lastly, strategies for assessing
the meeting’s effectiveness would be highlighted.
The QI team to be entrusted with the improvement process must have members who
are efficient enough to do justice to their roles. The professionals who would be included in
the QI team are Chief Executive Officer of the healthcare system, one of the two medical
directors, senior physicians, nursing leaders specifically nurse managers from different
departments, patient representatives, and practice managers. A ‘champion’ is to be selected
who would be committed to the ideologies of upholding quality improvement. This role
would be given to the medical director who would suffice the aim of imparting right
information at all levels for executing the action plan for reducing the shortage of staffing. He
would have interest in building capacity for implementing processes and promoting
improvement. His role would be to ensure that the QI team has a proper functioning,
fulfilling the charter it has within the organisational context. The tea members would be

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selected as mentioned as they have technical expertise and clinical leadership skills as well as
ability to sponsor the project (Graban, 2016).
Working in interdisciplinary teams pose a number of challenges for the team members
that hinder the path of achieving success in implementing the set plan. Shared errors are
common while working in an interdisciplinary team. Such errors are common to be made by
some of the team members. This is prevalent irrespective of the fact that there is a direct
communication between the individuals who initiate the error. The communication gap is
also quite high under certain circumstances. Frequently, there is a lack of transparent
communication between members, due to ego clashes. The prime way in which the issues can
be resolved is to conduct sessions with the members in which they would be encouraged to
exhibit clear communication and not bring in their ego for working in a professional manner,
These sessions can be conducted by professionals from the field of interpersonal relationship
management who would provide the appropriate guidance (Nancarrow et al., 2013).
The QI team needs to review the present state of staffing shortage and the scope for
increasing the staffing within a desirable time frame. The key aspect that needs to be
identified is the set of factors that lead to high staff turnover ratio. Stressful conditions,
resulting in job dissatisfaction and injury are to be indicated appropriately. The possible
scope for resource allocation for hiring and retention of staffs is to be reviewed with great
importance. Monetory resource is of more importance in such cases. Consultation can be
done with the HR department regarding the human resource allocation with the setting as per
the needs of the patient care delivery (Abookire et al., 2016).
It is crucial that buy-in is received from the team for its effective functioning. The
team is to be made to commit to a positive goal regarding quality improvement, and it has to
be involved in the overall planning process. The best strategies that can be applied in this

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regard are involvement of the members in the scheduling process and conducting a team
review of the schedule. In addition, leading questions might be asked that eliminates absence
of commitment. It is important that a SMART goal is set up for achieving the team’s buy-in.
This is as follows-
S- Carry out sessions with the individual team members for understanding their concerns in
relation to optimal participation
M- Obtain objective data from the participants
A-Team members would share their concerns
R- Resolutions would be based on the themes emerging from the sessions
T- One week
Meeting with the QI team must have a proper agenda that upholds the philosophies of
quality improvement in a clinical setting. The agenda in the present case would be to discuss
the facilitation of key driver models that would act as the road map for achieving the set
outcomes. The key drivers would be beneficial for defining the pathway to the transformation
with respect to staffing. This would include strategies based on evidence from existing
literature on health workforce management (Hoff et al., 2016).
After the meeting has been conducted with the QI team, it is essential that a robust
assessment is carried out to understand whether the meeting has been fruitful or not. It is
important to track the progress of the team by evaluating their actions. The meeting minutes
are to be reviewed in due time. Whether data has emerged on the key quality indicators in
what needs to be checked in the first place. The step to be taken is to work with the team
members to understand the set up of data systems intended to be produced on a regular basis
(Weaver et al., 2014).

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At the end of the discussion, it can be concluded that QI teams are charged with the
responsibility of executing improvement efforts. For the team to work effectively, it is
imperative that individuals work in collaboration with each other and respect the views and
opinions put forward. The team would uphold a identified goal committed towards the
process of continuous improvement in relation to staffing. Since team members would likely
be from all important domains, proposed improvements would be evident.

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References
Abookire, S. A., Bates, D. W., Slight, S., Chassin, M. R., DuPree, E. S., Pedroja, A. T., ... &
Hansen-Turton, T. (2016). America's Healthcare Transformation: Strategies and
Innovations. Rutgers University Press.
Graban, M. (2016). Lean hospitals: improving quality, patient safety, and employee
engagement. CRC press.
Gurses, A. P. (2016). Human Factors Engineering for Quality Improvement and Research in
Health Care. In Resident’s Handbook of Medical Quality and Safety (pp. 21-28).
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Hoff, T., Sutcliffe, K. M., & Young, G. J. (2016). The Healthcare Professional Workforce:
Understanding Human Capital in a Changing Industry. Oxford University Press.
Nancarrow, S. A., Booth, A., Ariss, S., Smith, T., Enderby, P., & Roots, A. (2013). Ten
principles of good interdisciplinary team work. Human resources for Health, 11(1),
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Weaver, S. J., Dy, S. M., & Rosen, M. A. (2014). Team-training in healthcare: a narrative
synthesis of the literature. BMJ Qual Saf, 23(5), 359-372.