RETRAINING FLOOR NURSES

This research describes a planned change for the floor nurses in an acute care hospital in a small city located in a major metropolitan region. The planned change involves the retraining of floor nurses to cope with a downsizing the nursing department. Kurt Lewin's Field Theory as it applies to organizational change is applied.

An increasing number of hospitals, in the pursuit of goals related to both efficiency and effectiveness, are implementing reorganization schemes that frequently involve downsizing, decentralization, or some combination of downsizing and decentralization (Barrett, 1995). Among health care professionals, nurses tend to be those most frequently displaced by the contemporary downsizing and decentralization strategies (Suderman, 1995). While the size of the nursing staff in the acute care hospital that is the setting for the planned change must be reduced, the major nursing problem involves the need to preserve the quality of patient care while accomplishing the downsizing objectives.

Downsizing of the nursing department will occur as so directed by the hospital administration. The objective of the nursing administrators in this situation is to develop a change strategy for the nursing department, gain hospital administration approval for the strategy, gain nursing staff support for the strategy, and implement a strategy that will serve the interes

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s skilled in change theory and the practice of planned change" (Goad & Hough, 1993, p. 187). While the change agent is not a component of change theory, the change agent is necessary for the effective functioning of planned change. Change theory assumes that a change agent will identify sources of dissatisfaction, determine the character of the factors responsible for this dissatisfaction, formulate a planned change to address the problem, and then implement the planned change. The change agent cannot identify sources of dissatisfaction and the underlying causal factors without performing assessing and diagnosing actions. Change theory implies that the unfreezing, moving, and refreezing process will begin once again when dissatisfaction with the implemented change occurs. The theory is more a framework within which planned change can be developed than it is a proactive approach to change implementation. The proposed intervention associated with the downsizing program for the nursing department involves the retraining of floor nurses as MSHPs to preserve care quality while complying with plans to downsize the nursing department. One serendipitous outcome to the MSHP program may be an increased empowerment for the professio
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Goad Hough, Hyde Fottler, Field Theory, Change Theory, MSHPs MSHPs, Schneller Ott, Laschinger Havens, APPLIES CHANGE, Nurse Management, planned change, change agent, change theory, nursing department, Services Administration, goad hough 1993, goad hough, hough 1993, nursing administration, health services, downsizing strategy, nursing staff, lewin's field theory, acute care hospital, retraining floor nurses, stage nursing administration,
Approximate Word count = 1602
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)