Describe the organization’s culture and explain to what degree the culture supports change. Consider organizational and leadership structure, mission and values, interprofessional collaboration/team engagement, communication, perception of the organization by employees, etc. Select an organizational readiness tool and assess the level or readiness for change within your organization. Identify the readiness tool and summarize the survey results.
Evidence-Based Practice Project Proposal: Organizational Culture and Readiness
Change is a complex process that can cause conflicts when not handled properly. As change agents, we are required to assess the organization’s readiness for change before taking the initiative to implement change. In this regard, there are various tools that could be used to facilitate the assessment of an organization’s readiness to change. The purpose of this paper will be to give a detailed description and assessment of an organization’s readiness to implement a community-based quality improvement initiative.
Organization Culture
The current organizational culture is based on a value system, with cultural centeredness, customer focus, and stewardship being some of the core values. The organization currently embraces a clan culture where teamwork is highly valued when conducting different organizational activities, more so given that most of the activities are community-based.
The current leadership style being embraced within the facility is a transformational leadership style, which is a leadership style characterized by empowerment of followers to be active participants in the change. Transformational leaders are usually open to new changes within the organization and have the ability to inspire member participation in the process (Doody & Doody, 2012).
As is currently, there is a high level of collaboration among employees. According to Willgerodt et al. (2020), embracing interprofessional collaborative practice is an essential facet to implementing change successfully within the organization. Given that the organization has also been conducting other quality improvement interventions, the employees are quite receptive to prospects of implementing change initiatives. However, further analysis on stakeholders is crucial to ascertain organizational readiness for change.
Organization Readiness Tool
The selected organizational readiness tool is known as Partnership Assessment Tool for Health (PATH). This is a useful tool in analyzing the nature of partnership between the organization and other stakeholders in implementing a change initiative. The tool has four components that it measures namely, internal and external relationships, workflow and service delivery, funding and finance, and data outcomes (CHCS, n.d). In summary, among the four measures, the assessment of the organization showed positive feedback in three of them and returned funding and finance as an aspect that needs further development.
The current organization culture embrace collaboration within and outside the organization to achieve common goals. Therefore, if this culture is sustained then the organization will maintain a high level of readiness in terms of maintaining effective partnerships, especially with external stakeholders, in turn sustaining the evidence-based practice change. which will be conducted in a community setting.
Some of the strengths that the organization has as per the analysis include strong internal and external relationships, evidenced by a shared understanding of goals. The organization is also strong in workflow and service delivery, and communication of data outcomes. Some of the potential barriers include a weaker finance structure that is dependent on a few financing sources.
Health Care Process and Systems
Several health care processes can be recommended for improving quality and safety, and cost-effectiveness within the organization. One of the processes that I would recommend is improving interprofessional communication. Doing so will enhance trust and understanding within the care team leading to the provision of patient-centered care (Foronda et al., 2016). Use of the PDCA