Systems Design
Complex work environments are filled with communication difficulties, uncertainty, and changing needs. Safe operations require appropriate feedback, functional working relationships, and maximizing self-organization. The Institute of Medicine, as well as a growing body of literature, recognize the need to adapt health care operations to this reality. Using principles of complexity science and conflict management, Health Care Mediations designs processes that improve patient safety and fit within the unique needs of each organization.
When clinicians have no reliable structure to guide teamwork or to resolve disagreements, it can perpetuate conflict and draw their attention away from patient care. Intentional teams and self-managed conflict resolution mechanisms infuse much-needed predictability into the uncertainties of treatment, and allow clinicians to return more of their focus where it’s needed.
Health Care Mediations services range from:
- conducting conflict audits to provide a sense of where to focus resources
- facilitated process design with high impact on improved performance for one or several work areas
- implementing an internal conflict management system that integrates with your existing processes, provides flexible options for responding to different types and severity of conflict, and encourages individuals to solve their own problems early and directly. Such a system integrates feedback both to help the organization learn and to keep the conflict management system itself dynamic and evolving.
Our process development experience includes:
- Design and implementation of patient safety program for academic medical center
- Redesign of management processes and leadership structure for large nursing department incorporating shared responsibility for action plans and collaborative leadership model
- Conflict assessment and conflict management program design for surgical/trauma ICU
- Development of interdisciplinary quality improvement committee
- Development of mediation-based conflict management program for nursing unit
- Design and implementation of inter-departmental team for addressing medication use issues
- Creation and training of patient safety teams
- Implementation of online event reporting system
- Creation of interdisciplinary medication safety committee
- Implementation of interdisciplinary rapid review process for practice disputes
- Development of professional consultation guidelines