Kurt lewin's Theory of Change (Coursework Sample)

Kurt lewin’s Theory of Change
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Institutional Affiliation
Kurt Lewin’s Theory of Change
Introduction
The healthcare environment is changing rapidly, with new conditions such as technological advancements challenging nurses and other health workers. It is hard to implement a change in how nurses and health workers carryout their duties due to the fear of failure or anxiety that they may experience. In this paper, the situation that changed is changing from the traditional method of shift report to bedside reporting, a move that was not welcomed by nurses. Thus, the paper examines the bedside reporting problem and how nurses reacted to them. The paper also examines how Kurt Lewin’s change theory was important as a framework to introduce the bedside reporting in the hospital. Lewin’s change theory can help in understanding how changes can affect an organization. The theory can also help in identifying barriers that hinder successful implementation of change in an organization.
In my workplace, there are several changes that have been made in how healthcare is organized and delivered. The changes have been facilitated by the many concurrent events, which include cost-containment efforts required by the health care organizations and modifications on how health insurance programs support the health care provider. Another major factor that has facilitated the changes is the increased demand for improved healthcare technologies. There have also been changes in the workforce of the healthcare services, which has also played a role in changing how health care services are delivered. The changes have not been accepted by the healthcare organizations, which have affected the working environment of health workers.
As a result, health workers have been not as efficient as expected in their provision of health services. Some of the changes have seen individual nurses being assigned to patients who depend on technology and others who are acutely ill. The changes have also resulted to changes in how nurses are deployed. Many organizations and individuals have protested against these changes, claiming that they affect the ability of the nurses to provide patients with a safe health care.
Sometimes back, the hospital changed to bedside reporting, reverting from the traditional end of shift report, which did not require nurses to give a report in a patient’s room. At first, nurses rejected the move. However, health and safety of the patient is always paramount. It was a major challenge for nurses to break from the traditional method of reporting. Although families and patients are essential in the care and safety experience, the new changes were taking care of their input in reports. In most cases, nurses used to take the reports of the patients, where they would exchange them in their station (Utley, 2011). Hence, nurses need to have a psychological adjustment and practice change, mainly because of the report time that the nurses need. Most nurses faced challenges adapting to the bedside reports since they were required to engage the families and patients in gathering the required information.
In their defense, nurses argued that they worked in environments that did not have much privacy, where most the patients were admitted in semiprivate wards or rooms. In their argument, nurses claimed that there were high chances of other families or patients overhearing confidential information when carrying out a bedside report. The units in which nurses work should not prevent them from using families and patients as important aspects in decision making and care planning, especially when they can contribute to the safety of the patient. In most cases, a patient’s confidential information is disclosed when the physicians and staff discuss with the patients (Utley, 2011). The disclosure of confidential information is not intentional but is there due to the fact that patients share common spaces and rooms in the hospital.
Another concern that the nurses had about bedside reports is the issue of new information or sensitive topics that have not been shared with the family or patient yet. Nurses used these issues to justify why they should stick to the traditional method of taking reports. However, the new changes required reports to be taken at the bedside. Thus, nurses were required to come up with plans on how they could share the new information or sensitive information with the patient or family before having the bedside report (Shulman et. al, 2013). For example, there could be a situation where an infant has intraventricular hemorrhage. The nurse in charge of the infant could not have met with the parents, which means that they should first share the information before approaching the bedside. The main goal of having the change was to modify the behavior of the health workers, which could result to families and patients being included in the report procedures. Nurses also argued that bedside reporting would decrease their efficiency, unlike traditional shift methods, which would threaten the patient of the patient and subject the nurses to working overtime hours. The change required the nurse to learn negotiation skills, which should be used to meet the patient’s and families’ needs.
To implement the change, the hospital used Lewin’s change theory to understand the nurse’s behavior in relation to the change. The theory was also used to understand the patterns of resistance that the nurses used. The intention of using the change theory was to identify forces that opposed the changes, which are known as static forces, and forces promoting the changes, which are known as driving forces (Marquis & Huston, 2011). If the hospital management understood the forces driving or opposing the change and work to strengthen the driving forces, then change would occur successfully.
In Lewin’s first stage, the unfreezing stage, the management should understand the barriers related to the problem. The management used the unfreezing stage to communicate with the nurses and other stakeholders of the hospital. The inclusion o...