Quiet at Night?
You are the night shift charge nurse on a busy surgical unit in a large, urban teaching hospital. Surgeries occur around the clock, and frequently, noise levels are higher than desired because of the significant number of nurses, physicians, residents, interns, and other health-care workers who gather at the nurses station or in the halls outside of patient rooms. Today, the unit manager has come to you because the hospital’s score on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (hCahPS) survey for the category Always Quiet at Night falls far below the desired benchmark. She has asked you to devise a plan to address this quality of care issue. The management goal in this situation is to achieve an HCAHPS score on Always Quiet at Night that meets the accepted best practices benchmark, thus assuring that patients get the rest they need to promote their recovery. The leadership goal is to foster a shared commitment among all health-care professionals working on the unit to achieve the Always Quiet at Night goal.
Assignment:
- Identify five management strategies you might use to address the problem of excessive noise on the unit at night. For example, your list might include structural environmental changes or work redesign.
- Then identify five leadership strategies you might use to promote buy-in of the Quiet at Night initiative by all health-care professionals on the unit. How will you inspire these individuals to work with you in achieving this critically important goal? What incentives might you use to reward behavior conducive to meeting this goal?
- Discuss whether you feel this goal could be achieved by employing only the management strategies you identified. Could it be achieved only with the implementation of leadership strategies for team building
Expert Solution Preview
Introduction:
As a medical professor responsible for creating assignments for medical college students, it is important to address real-world scenarios that they may face in their future careers. In this case, the scenario centers around excessive noise levels on a surgical unit in a large, urban teaching hospital that negatively impacts patient satisfaction scores. The assignment tasks students with identifying management and leadership strategies to address this issue.
1. Five management strategies that can be used to tackle excessive noise on the unit at night include:
a) Creating a noise reduction policy: Developing a policy that outlines expectations for staff behavior, such as speaking quietly, turning off pagers and phones, and avoiding non-essential conversations during quiet hours.
b) Revamping equipment: Updating equipment to reduce the level of noise generated by machines and other devices.
c) Adjusting patient care activities: Adjusting the timing of patient care activities, such as medication administration or room checks, to reduce the number of times staff enters a patient’s room at night.
d) Physical environment changes: Changing the physical environment, such as adding sound-absorbing materials to walls and ceiling, to reduce noise levels in patient rooms and in common areas.
e) Staff education: Providing education to staff on the impact of noise on patient healing and satisfaction, as well as demonstrating communication techniques that minimize noise generation.
2. Five leadership strategies to encourage involvement of all healthcare professionals on the unit in achieving the goal of a quiet environment at night are:
a) Consistent communication: Conveying the importance of reducing noise through regular communication with staff, such as through in-person meetings or emails.
b) Lead by example: Implementing the same noise reduction expectations on a personal level and setting an example for other staff to follow.
c) Rewards and recognition: Providing incentives and rewards to staff for meeting noise reduction targets.
d) Training: Providing additional training sessions on techniques to minimize noise generation, communication with patients and colleagues, and effective teamwork strategies to meet the Quiet at Night initiative.
e) Encouraging collaboration: Encouraging staff to work together and establish a shared commitment towards achieving the Quiet at Night goal.
3. While management strategies alone can go a long way in reducing excessive noise on the unit at night, it is likely that the goal of a consistently quiet environment is possible only with the implementation of leadership strategies. Teamwork and commitment from all healthcare professionals are critical to achieving the desired result. Therefore, a combination of management and leadership strategies is necessary to promote behavior change and achieve the goal of a Quiet at Night.
