NSG 4029 Week 3 Discussion
Effective leadership can help nurse leaders to bring about a desirable change within the system. Using
the South University Online Library or the Internet, gain adequate insight into change theories and
change management, and answer the following questions:
What does it mean to be a change agent? Give two examples of when you were a change agent or
witnessed another nurse as a change agent
What happened and how did the change occur? Citations should conform to APA guidelines. You may
use this APA Citation Helper as a convenient reference for properly citing resources or connect to the
APA Style website through the APA icon below
Healthcare continuosly change to due patient acuity, technology advancement and other factors. Thus,
caregivers including nurses should adjust or adapt to these changes. Managers are known to facilitate
changes in organizations but a change agent can be anyone other than managers. A change agent is
someone who has the ability and skills to influence others to work on achieving a proposed change.
Both changes that I witnessed were planned, that is they were purposeful, calculated, and collaborative
(Murray, 2017, p. 295). On our rehab unit, we had a high fall rates with an average of two fall per
week. One patient suffered a fructured femur as a result of fall on my unit and many other were
transferred back to acute care after sustaning a fall. This became a concern not for the nurses alone but
for my manager and other stake holders. My manager organised meeting go discuss how we could
reduce the high fall rate. After a fall nurses had to answer questions like the orinteation state of the
patient before the fall, medications given, the fall risk of the patient and if alarms were used. After
assessing the problem we all agreed that not using alrams and nurse patient ratio were the major
contibuting factors for the high fall rate. Nurse use to have a ratio of 1:8 patient and sometimes 1:10
patients. My manager agreed to talk to management team to update our grid and the goal was one nurse
to four patients with a maximum of five patients. The other goal was to ensure that every patient was
on alarms irrespective of their orinteation status. As part of the documentation of our hourly rounding,
nurses needed to verify that patients bed had the green light on which indicated that the alarms were
set. The team leader had to double check the green lights and if they were not on, the nurse in question
had a write up. This ensured that there were no opposing force to the change process (Murray, 2017, p.
295). Changing the grid took a while but eventually it came down to one nurse to five patients with a
maximum of six. These changes made great impact on our fall rates. The unit had a three straight
months of no falls when both changes were implemented. All the nurses were happy with the results
and we didn’t need no reminders to set our alrams.
I witnessed another change whiles working on the oncology unit. The unit had issues with incivility
and on occassions one nurse will be rude to the other. This affected not only the nurses but patient care
as well (Green, 2019). One nurse had and argument with the team leader which excalated into a
phisical fight. The unit supervisor called the two nurses and after she found out the root cause of the
fight she had a meeting with all the nurses on the unit. The root cause was patient assignment. The
nurse felt that the team lead always gave her high acuity patients. We all made to come with
suggestions on how to assess or grade acuity and how patients should be assigned. After that the
supervisor came up with a plan. On each shift nurses were made to grade the acuity of their patients on
a scale of 1-4 using indicators. Team leaders had to assign patients based on the acuity and a copy for
Effective leadership can help nurse leaders to bring about a desirable change within the system. Using
the South University Online Library or the Internet, gain adequate insight into change theories and
change management, and answer the following questions:
What does it mean to be a change agent? Give two examples of when you were a change agent or
witnessed another nurse as a change agent
What happened and how did the change occur? Citations should conform to APA guidelines. You may
use this APA Citation Helper as a convenient reference for properly citing resources or connect to the
APA Style website through the APA icon below
Healthcare continuosly change to due patient acuity, technology advancement and other factors. Thus,
caregivers including nurses should adjust or adapt to these changes. Managers are known to facilitate
changes in organizations but a change agent can be anyone other than managers. A change agent is
someone who has the ability and skills to influence others to work on achieving a proposed change.
Both changes that I witnessed were planned, that is they were purposeful, calculated, and collaborative
(Murray, 2017, p. 295). On our rehab unit, we had a high fall rates with an average of two fall per
week. One patient suffered a fructured femur as a result of fall on my unit and many other were
transferred back to acute care after sustaning a fall. This became a concern not for the nurses alone but
for my manager and other stake holders. My manager organised meeting go discuss how we could
reduce the high fall rate. After a fall nurses had to answer questions like the orinteation state of the
patient before the fall, medications given, the fall risk of the patient and if alarms were used. After
assessing the problem we all agreed that not using alrams and nurse patient ratio were the major
contibuting factors for the high fall rate. Nurse use to have a ratio of 1:8 patient and sometimes 1:10
patients. My manager agreed to talk to management team to update our grid and the goal was one nurse
to four patients with a maximum of five patients. The other goal was to ensure that every patient was
on alarms irrespective of their orinteation status. As part of the documentation of our hourly rounding,
nurses needed to verify that patients bed had the green light on which indicated that the alarms were
set. The team leader had to double check the green lights and if they were not on, the nurse in question
had a write up. This ensured that there were no opposing force to the change process (Murray, 2017, p.
295). Changing the grid took a while but eventually it came down to one nurse to five patients with a
maximum of six. These changes made great impact on our fall rates. The unit had a three straight
months of no falls when both changes were implemented. All the nurses were happy with the results
and we didn’t need no reminders to set our alrams.
I witnessed another change whiles working on the oncology unit. The unit had issues with incivility
and on occassions one nurse will be rude to the other. This affected not only the nurses but patient care
as well (Green, 2019). One nurse had and argument with the team leader which excalated into a
phisical fight. The unit supervisor called the two nurses and after she found out the root cause of the
fight she had a meeting with all the nurses on the unit. The root cause was patient assignment. The
nurse felt that the team lead always gave her high acuity patients. We all made to come with
suggestions on how to assess or grade acuity and how patients should be assigned. After that the
supervisor came up with a plan. On each shift nurses were made to grade the acuity of their patients on
a scale of 1-4 using indicators. Team leaders had to assign patients based on the acuity and a copy for
