Reducing Resistance Among Nursing Staff While Implementing BCMA
Executive Summary
The plan was created to tackle the problem of resistance on the part of nurses of one of the hospital units against implementation of BCMA system across the unit. The investigation showed that resistance on the part of nurses is manifested mostly in skipping the steps of the scanning procedure and related issues, and is hardly related to purely technical issues. At the same time the change was implemented from top to bottom as a single sweep across the hospital, so the staff was not given any choice. Besides, implementation of assumingly controlling automated system by default questions qualification and working ethics of experienced nurses whose work was not doubted before.
Further investigation into the matter showed that across different hospitals and nursing homes nurses perceived the shift to BCMA negatively exactly due to emotional factors. Technical matters were less involved in the resistance triggering. With regard to the findings, the viable solutions for reducing resistance relate to building communication and trustful relations with the staff and promoting the message about positivity of change. Acknowledgement of their qualifications and experience is also necessary. To achieve that, it is recommended to communicate these messages openly to the staff at common meetings, to survey the attitudes and find out possible individual causes of rejection and incentives to use the system. These incentives can be offered to all staff members. Positive communication and appreciation of contribution of an experienced nurse who is an informal authority in the group will also add to changing the emotional perception of change in the group. Leadership role in this case is getting closer to the staff and involving them into regulation of the process of change introduction.
Among more direct and formal measures one can name dividing the compliance process into smaller steps and incentivizing staff members for growing compliance until observance of all steps is achieved. Additional education on the system implementation, peer training and creation of mixed shifts with more and less complying nurses will also contribute to reduction of resistance. Other necessary steps will be maintaining efficient communication with nurses across the intervention and retaining the reduced level of resistance.
The Change
The hospital is moving to a new system of BCMA that is bound to minimize the risk for patients to get improper medication thus reducing the adverse effects to health. Besides, the system is meant to improve records keeping and to promote the culture of safety.
The Problem
The detected problem is resistance of the nursing staff to implementation of BCMA system, although its use in the hospital setting is reported to reduce level of cases of misadministration of medication. Instead of eagerly applying the new system, nurses quietly sabotage its elements and one of them shows open opposition. Despite claims to 'try and do it better', the resistance …