All Entries Tagged With: "teambuilding techniques"
Practical tips for implementing shared governance
Diana Swihart, PhD, DMin, MSN, CS, RN-BC, shares the following practical tips and best practices for ensuring success when building shared governance.
- Schedule a day-long retreat away from the organization to prepare organizational and nursing leaders to implement shared governance. Discuss the role shared governance plays in the ANCC Magnet Recognition Program(r) (MRP) journey. Have subject matter experts present topic discussions on specific points: leadership, shared governance partners, steering committee formation, design team for the shared governance model, a business case for MRP and shared governance, and roles of direct-care nurses and the multidisciplinary team members.
- Create expectations for staff contributions, beginning in the new employee orientation and continuing throughout their careers.
- Communicate, communicate, communicate! Have a nursing town hall meeting at least once a quarter to facilitate open communication among nursing staff and leaders.
- Administer the Index of Professional Nursing Governance surveys and see how your organization “measures up”-help build the repository of information on the efficacy and value of shared governance in healthcare settings.
- Use journal clubs, for example, to bring nursing research to the bedside and engage direct-care nurses in evidence-based practice for developing and implementing advanced decision-making and critical thinking.
- Let direct-care nurses meet each year to review organizational competencies and unit/area needs and determine which competencies they will focus on for that year (high-risk/time-sensitive, changed, problematic, and/or new).
- Train every registered nurse on each unit/area to be charge or lead nurse. Rotate the role and responsibilities to encourage leadership skills development and shared decision-making among all team members.
Source: Book excerpt adapted from Shared Governance: A Practical Approach to Transform Professional Nursing Practice by Diana Swihart, PhD, DMin, MSN, CS, RN-BC. Click here to visit www.hcmarketplace.com.
Different ways peers are improving nurse satisfaction
The July 28 blog post discussing ways to boost nurse morale in a time of uncertainty has been one of the most popular recent topics. The post provided quick and helpful hints on no- or low-cost ways to boost the morale of nurses in your organizations. The post also generated a lot of discussion and many readers shared their own tips and strategies about what they have been trying.
Here are some of the highlights of the suggestions:
- Caught red handed campaign: Recognize staff members who have been “caught” doing their job well.
- Gift cards: Present a gift card to acknowledge a nurse who has gone out of his or her way to be an excellent nurse.
- Strive for five: Leave small questionnaires in plain sight of patients, visitors, and hospital staff members and ask everyone to fill them out. The person can comment on a particular staff member doing an excellent job, similar to a comment card at a restaurant. Any staff member receiving a good comment earns $10 on the next pay check.
- Hand written thank-you cards: Thank-you cards are always a great thing, but hand written ones can be the best. Instead of sending an email about a job well done to a staff member, write a thank-you card and leave it in their locker. After a tough shift, whether it’s night call or day call, the card will surely bring a smile to their face.
- The stupid nice game: Be over-the-top nice to everyone and overly complimentary to everyone at the hospital. Laughter is contagious, and sometimes taking the compliment to the next level, or having staff members realize how over the top you are being, could make their day that much better.
What are you doing at your organization to help boost staff members’ morale?
Nurses use artistic talents to improve patient experience and hospital atmosphere
This past summer, nurses Mary Cohn and Annette Bargmann of Anne Arundel Medical Center (AAMC) in Parole, MD, visited patient rooms armed not with medication, but with acrylic paint.
AAMC is undergoing a series of renovations that have necessitated many windows in the acute care pavilion being covered with a film to darken the windows toshield patients from the occasional glare of the construction equipment and provide more privacy. This film has replaced the natural light flooding into patient rooms and has created a gloomy atmosphere. [more]
Encourage staff to work and play together
Nurses of different generations are bound to hold different values, beliefs, and interests. For effective communication in and outside your unit, you must increase staffs’ understanding of these differences. Here are some suggestions to get staff talking and bonding: [more]
Team building idea!
This is a quick idea you can implement either at the beginning or the end of a staff meeting. The purpose if two-fold: To provide opportunity for staff to identify unit concerns they’d like to see addressed, and To help staff think outside the box for possible solutions.
You Need:
A piece of paper and a pen for each person; a small basket.
What To Do:
1) Ask each staff member to write a unit problem, issue or concern they’d like help to solve (you may need to describe an acceptable concern that can be addressed by staff).
2) Staff then folds their paper and drops it in the basket.
3) Ask one person to choose a folded paper. Without reading it, ask him/her to hand the paper to someone else.
4) The recipient of the folded paper selects 2 peers with whom he/she would like to work.
5) Repeat steps 3 and 4 until everyone is on a problem-solving team.
6) Allow each team 5 – 10 minutes to compile ideas, suggestions or a soltution for the problem on their paper.
7) Each team has 1 minute to read the problem and describe their intended solution.
1) Timeline for implementation of the solution(s).
2) Why don’t we think to ask each other for help more often?
3) How can we encourage each other to ask for help when it’s needed?
4) What should we do with the folded papers we didn’t get to today?
A Quote To Ponder:
“Forget about all the reasons why something may not work. You only need to find one good reason why it will.”
~ Dr. Robert Anthony, PhD.
Build an engaged team!
am! That’s a tall order to fill, but it isn’t impossible. Here are a couple of quick-fire ideas to get started towards fostering engagement:
Try to identify one learning opportunity for each of your staff.
This doean’t mean that everyone has to attend an expen$ive conference. How about cross-training, one additional departmental responsibility, or a self-study project? A primary characteristic of engaged employees is the feeling of being challenged.
Offer 5 times more praise than correction.
Admittedly, this can be a challenge when considering a low achieving performer. Try to take note of any incremental progress, demonstration of positive behaviors or even a wonderful sense of humor that enables his/her peers to have a few minutes of stress relief!
What ideas do YOU use to foster engagement?
A great idea for teambuilding!
Kick It Up A Notch: Leave a few pieces out, but give them to ancillary staff (RT, PT, CM, etc.). After a time of having “holes” in the finished picture, ask the other disciplines to fit their pieces into the picture. You could even have someone glue the puzzle and ask engineering to hang it–as a reminder that we cannot work together without everyone’s input.
2 GREAT QUOTES:
“Whoever does not love his work cannot hope that it will please others.” (unknown)
“Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.” (John Maxwell)
