Marie Manthey’s Nursing Salon

A recent dialog among Creative Health Care Management (CHCM) consultants resulted in an internal communication I have decided to share with the blog.  As always, your comments are welcome.  (Also…how do you like the new look?)

This communication about Relationship-Based Care started with a question from Mary Koloroutis via email within our company.   

From Mary to all Consultants: 

An issue that continues to surface in the RBC Leader Practicum and in some interactions I have with nurse managers and unit practice council members is that as much as they would like to implement a primary nursing model of nursing practice, that the acuity, staffing realities (ratios and schedules), and the geography of the unit, create huge barriers to their getting there.   How are client managers addressing this?

Jayne Felgen, president of CHCM, sent this reply: 

From Jayne Felgen to Mary, copied to all consultants: 

It IS the HEART of  RBC…accepting a responsibility relationship for the patient’s care throughout their stay on that unit is the ultimate expression of professional practice.

I’m naming it and claiming it! So, the work of the Unit Practice Council is to review current scheduling and assignment practices (Work Complexity Assessment) looking especially for fragmentation reduction opportunities…to make it more likely that the nurse who agrees to perform the admission activities might also chose to be the primary nurse.

So, like an attending physician retains responsibility despite multiple consultants, or her/his day off, so do nurses create an infrastructure in which they claim responsibility for 1-2 patients among their typical assignment. Once those responsibilities are “owned”, the nurses communicate in more deliberate ways, proactively, more precisely…not unlike a parent leaving explicit instructions for the sister who’s caring for the kids while parents have a get-away. When they return, they resume care. While they’re gone, they’ve anticipated every possible need.

Having said that, 100% compliance with this may be impossible, but, we urge them to shoot for it because it’s the right thing to do. And, using Appreciative Inquiry (AI) principles, learn why it worked when it worked, and then do more of that.

Until we accept this responsibility at this level, we’ll continue to ignore the crazy schedules (1 day on, one off, 8-10-12 hour shifts reporting on/off to each other, robbing Peter-to-pay-Paul floating practices, being married to geography rather than relationship, and other craziness that produces high variability and low professional reward/satisfaction in our systems.

I am abundantly clear that we must step up and claim our practice…not by tasks or shifts, but one relationship at a time…nurses, therapists, social workers, pharmacists, etc. It’s the professional v. technical dialog again.

John Nelson — nurse researcher, president of Healthcare Environments and CHCM adjunct faculty —  frequently shares data with us about the outcomes of our work with our clients. One hospital implementing Relationship-Based Care found that a richer skill mix decreased the dollars per Adjusted Patient Day, decreased ventilator-associated pneumonia and decreased patient falls with injury. John would hasten to add that this is a statistical correlation that does not indicate causality, but only a relationship between variables. I think the more we learn how to interpret and correctly discuss this kind of statistic, the better able we are to explain the importance of adequate staffing.

After the “reengineering” of nursing in the nineties (which had nothing to do with nursing, and everything to do with saving money), we lost sight of simple truths and replaced our authentic experience with “grids” which supposedly save money but which in reality wreak havoc with common sense.

Some truths we need to reclaim are:

• Skill mix should be related to acuity not to a financial goal.
• Changes in patient census should drive changes in total FTEs.
• Continuity of assignment increases productivity (having the same patients two days in a row increase productivity by approximately 25%).
• Use of support staff improves when delegation is based on trust. Working together builds trust, so pairing and partnering leads to the best use of NAs and LPNs.
• Staff should only be ‘pulled’ off their home unit when not to do so will have DIRE consequences. It should never be done just “balance the numbers”.
• Morale of the staff determines quality of care. Morale is a function of how staff members treat each other.

Introducing Relationship-based Care is an excellent way to re-introduce these simple truths and return our profession to “common sense management”.

Recently a graduate student in nursing asked if she could interview me for an assignment on Leadership. As I answered her questions …”when did you first know you were a leader?”, “where did you learn how to be a leader?” “what is the most important thing you learned?” … I was led into some

Recently a graduate student in nursing asked if she could interview me for an assignment on Leadership.   As I answered her questions …”when did you first know you were a leader?”, “where did you learn how to be a leader?” “what is the most important thing you learned?” … I was led into some insightful reflections about change I’d like to share with you. I hope the readers will share their own insights as we ‘blog-on’ together.

First of all, when Primary Nursing was originally implemented, I knew nothing about change.   If I had, Primary Nursing might not have started when it did.  We were trying to do something else, called Unit Management.   A few roadblocks along the way led us to change directions dramatically, with the result that the staff of real unit actually implemented the delivery system before we knew they were changing delivery systems. They didn’t know it either…none of us understood the profound change the staff was creating as they moved from traditional team nursing into what we eventually called Primary Nursing.

I didn’t know about PERT charts and force field analysis….or about how to deal with resistance, or any of the theories commonly taught as part of the change process. Therefore, we didn’t have steps outlined, with time tables, goals, benchmarks, etc…. and were thus free to support the staff throughout this period of change.  All we had to guide us was common sense.

Which leads to the first learning. Decentralized Decision-Making is the core of Primary Nursing.   As I came to understand how this organizing principle works, I eventually constructed the following equation:   Change:Empowerment = Empowerment:Change.  This equation is founded on the truth that the people who know the most about the work being done are the people doing the work. Therefore, their knowledge needs to be used in deciding how to improve the work.

What role does that leave Leaders?   And how can Leaders get people to agree on how to improve their own work?

The second learning has to do with the use of visioning and inspiration as leadership tools.  One of the most important roles of a leader is to be able to paint a picture of a foreseeable future that is more desirable than the present, in language that inspires others to follow.  A ‘good’ leader will base this vision on values that are positive universal human values.

And the third learning has to do with infrastructure. A good change project (one that is successful) will incorporate a structural design that provides clear roles/expectations for appropriate decision-making at the various levels of authority. The design of the structure must be carefully thought-out……be based on the current role responsibilities throughout the department/institution with decision-making carefully allocated to the appropriate authority levels.

Those of you who have read Relationship Based Care: A Model for Transforming Practice will recognize in the above paragraph two of the four elements of Jayne Felgen’s theory of change…..Inspiration, Infrastructure, Education and Evidence.   Our extended experience with operational change will hopefully extend educational realms.