NURS FPX 4005 Assessment 2 Interview and Interdisciplinary

NURS FPX 4005 Assessment 2 Interview and Interdisciplinary Issue Identification

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Capella University
NURS FPX 4005 Assessment 2
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Submission Date

Interview and Interdisciplinary Issue Identification

The interdisciplinary collaboration is now a vital part of contemporary healthcare since intricate patient needs tend to demand knowledge and skills from various fields cooperating towards a common setup (Warren and Warren, 2023). Being a nurse prepared at the baccalaureate stage, the skills to identify the challenges faced by the organization, organize the solutions as a team, and ensure the implementation of the evidence-based strategies are paramount in enhancing the patient and the system outcomes.

The process commences with such an assessment when an interview with a healthcare professional is conducted to investigate real-life problems connected with communication, workflow, or coordination existing in an organization.

Interview Summary

The organization has a heterogeneous population of adults and older adults with various chronic and acute conditions; the recent trends in services are the high rates of inpatient turnover and the increase in the pressure on outpatient follow-up. In the interview, the participant outlined a series of operational stressors, in particular, inadequate discharge coordination between nursing, case management, and outpatient services, which introduce patient flow delays and sometimes readmission (Cadel et al., 2022).

These system pressures were placed in the context of a system where staffing variability and competing priorities make timely communication and transition of care difficult. The interviewee is a nurse manager working in two inpatient units of the medical-surgical unit who reported daily tasks that involve nursing staff supervisor duties, communication with case managers and physicians, and quality indicators such as the length of stay and readmission rates.

Discussing organizational problems, the interviewee stated that interdisciplinary communication failures (such as discharge plans, missed information on outpatient appointments) hampered the working process, elevated nursing load, which negatively influenced patient satisfaction and continuity of the treatment. Leadership had already made a number of fixes, such as short interdisciplinary huddles, ad hoc electronic reminders, and specific staff education, only to create partial changes because of poor engagement and not standardized processes (Girnius et al., 2024).

In terms of culture, the interviewee said that there was generally a positive attitude toward teamwork, but there was inconsistency between different departments working on participating in formal interdisciplinary processes; previous interdisciplinary team experiences demonstrated that formal communication tools, as well as leadership support, were central to success. Open-ended questions, reflective probing, and active listening were used to facilitate the interview since wide range of information can be gathered to be analyzed further.

Issue Identification

It is also an interdisciplinary problem in nature since successful discharge planning demands the coordinated efforts of various departments, joint decision-making, and the exchange of information in a timely fashion to ensure patients’ safe transition. An interdisciplinary approach is consequently critical because no single department possesses all the information or authority to maximize discharge, and the experience of individual departments, like individual nurse-led education or case management alerts, did not incur lasting improvement (Tseng et al., 2025).

The interviewee’s comments on slow communication, disjointed workflows, and inconsistent discharge involvement highlight that the issue lies between disciplines, requiring a coordinated solution through teamwork and collaboration.

Change Theories That Could Lead to an Interdisciplinary Solution

The Change Theory by Lewin and the 8-Step Change Model of Kotter is a powerful framework to lead an interdisciplinary intervention to enhance discharge coordination. The Lewin model has highlighted three stages, namely unfreezing, changing, and refreezing, all of which are quite natural in supporting the team-based practice change as they encourage stakeholders to appreciate the necessity of change, adopt new collaborative behaviors, and standardize the communication process across disciplines.

The model by Kotter builds on this, giving much emphasis on steps, like establishing a sense of urgency, establishing a guiding coalition, giving a shared vision, and empowering action on a broad scale, all of which were reflected in the collective leadership, the coordinated effort that is needed in interdisciplinary teams. Both theories promote orderly communication, common ownership, and gradual integration of new workflows, which are essential to solving the communication failures as indicated in the interview.

NURS FPX 4005 Assessment 2

The peer-reviewed literature provides consistent evidence that these models work well in medical environments, particularly in cases where the change that was to be introduced involves the coordination of work of the members of various professional groups (Persson et al., 2022).

The theories are particularly applicable to the discharge coordination issue due to the fact that they offer systematic approaches to providing resistance, ensuring staff involvement, and incorporating new communication practices within various departments. The unfreezing stage introduced by Lewin can assist the organization to realise that the presence of fragmented communication is resulting in poor patient outcomes, and the change phase can be offered to introduce systemic interdisciplinary discharge huddles or standardised communication tools.

The steps of Kotter also help leaders to make interdisciplinary champions and consolidate new behaviors by recognizing and training people and providing feedback loops (Zomorodi et al., 2024).

Leadership Strategies That Could Lead to an Interdisciplinary Solution

Transformational leadership is one of the most efficient methods of developing interdisciplinary cooperation and leading the process of organizational change. Transformational leaders can inspire and motivate staff members by propagating a common vision, empowering the team members as well, and encouraging free exchange of information across professional lines.

This type of leadership focuses on relationship-building, trust, and psychological safety, of the crucial factors that help NURS FPX 4005 Assessment 2, physicians, case managers, and other allied professionals in the field to open up in their solving of issues and joint decision making. The available evidence demonstrates that transformational leadership enhances the cohesion of teams, the quality of communication, and willingness to change, which makes it especially applicable in dealing with multi-departmental, complicated problems (Singh et al., 2024).

Since the transformational leaders provide inclusive behaviors and involve different disciplines to ensure that the specialists contribute their input, the transformational leaders have a good opportunity to lead the staff through the process of adopting new communication working processes and interdisciplinary forms of work.

The applicability of transformational leadership to the discharge coordination problem is particularly obvious when speaking of the issue of inconsistent involvement and disjointed communication expressed by the interviewee. Possibly, a transformational leader can communicate a shared vision of interdisciplinary rounds in consistent discharge planning, encourage employees to participate regularly in interdisciplinary rounds, and assist the teams to create standardized communication methods like formal handoff procedures.

This leadership style would contribute to silo-busting and making all disciplines feel empowered and committed to discharge outcomes improvements because of the existing trust and accountability within the departments (Bakewell, 2024).

Collaboration Approaches for Interdisciplinary Teams

These collaboration strategies are direct solutions to the discharge coordination problem reported in the interview because they have established dependable strategies to provide real-time information and expectations of all team members. Standardization in nursing and case management changes could be based on SBAR to avoid miscommunication regarding discharge preparation or follow-up care.

The interdisciplinary rounds would foster the regular involvement and the interdisciplinary communication that would lead to delays and work overload being eliminated. The use of the strategies of Team STEPPS, which include check-backs, briefs, and cross-monitoring, would create accountability and ownership of the discharge process by the department.

Conclusion

The interview identified discontinuous communication and interdisciplinary coordination as critical challenges to successful discharge planning and quality outcomes in patients. The detection of this problem contributes to the necessity of the team-based, evidence-based intervention that could be enhanced with the appropriate models of change and strong leadership.

The application of the Lewin Change Theory and transformational leadership can lead the staff to long-term changes, whereas SBAR, interdisciplinary rounds, and TeamSTEPPS were used to promote communication and workflow.

References

Alharbi, M. F. (2025). Does electronic health record implementation enhance hospital efficiency and patient outcomes? A comprehensive systematic review. SAGE Open, 15(3), 0. https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440251359791

Zomorodi, M., Lisa, Ciarrocca, K., Neal, M., & Rodgers, P. (2024). Step by step: Utilizing Kotter’s model to design and implement a strategic plan for institutionalizing interprofessional education and practice. Journal of Interprofessional Education & Practice, 37(1). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xjep.2024.100720