Section E Change Model
Change is inevitable in all organizations especially when a new program is implemented. in healthcare set-up, change occurs so that quality is assured in the care provided. Due to an increased rate of hospital-acquired infections in medical-surgical wards, change in hand hygiene practice has been proposed as a way which will minimize deaths and reduce the length of stay for these patients. Healthcare workers are the number one agents of transmitting healthcare-related infections. To minimize the rate of transmission, the use of alcohol-based hand sanitizer is assumed to reduce the rate of infections as compared to the regular antimicrobial soap and water (Zhang et al., 2015). Nurses and other medical providers should be educated and trained on the use of alcohol-based hand sanitizer so that the rate of transmitting healthcare-related infections can be minimized. Rogers’ diffusion of innovation theory explained that there are several ways with which an innovation is communicated in a population and the period a taken by members of a population to adapt to a certain innovation. Rogers included four stages with which innovation occurs in an organization and the stages were awareness, persuasion of interest, decision, and implementation and adoption stage (Leggott et al., 2016). Also, in his theory, Rogers grouped individuals according to their rate of adoption to the innovation where individuals are innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.
When implementing the change according to Rogers diffusion theory, creating awareness of the change is the first step to implementation. Nurses and other medical practitioners will be informed about the use of alcohol-based hand sanitizer and its effectiveness over the regular antimicrobial soap and water. The knowledge will be impacted through education and training which will expose the nurses and medical practitioners to the innovation. Peer to peer communication will also aid in creating awareness of the new innovation, and this will speed up the adoption rate.
The second step in Roger’s theory is persuasion where individuals exposed to the new change show interest by enquiring more about the innovation. When the nurses and other medical practitioners are educated about the use of alcohol-based hand sanitizer over the usual antimicrobial soap, they will portray interest in the use of alcohol-based hand sanitizer, and this can be revealed by the questions asked regarding the same. During this stage, individuals are interested with the innovation and seek more information so that they are sure of the benefits expected from the innovation (Leggott, Martin, Sklar, Helitzer, Rosett, Crandall & Mercer, 2016).
The third stage of the theory is the decision-making stage where individuals apply the innovation to the current situation and anticipate the future outcome so that they can make a wise decision on whether to adopt it. The stage is also called the evaluation stage, and this will involve nurses and other medical practitioners evaluating the effectiveness of alcohol-based hand sanitizers over the usual antimicrobial soap. They will also anticipate the future outcome of the use, and this will be the base for the decision that will be made towards the use of alcohol-based hand sanitizer in hand hygiene (Pashaeypoor, Ashktorab, Rassouli, & Alavi-Majd, 2016).
The fourth stage is implementation, and this involves making full use of alcohol-based hand sanitizer by the nurses and the other healthcare workers. At this step, most organizations test by using the innovation for a certain period and assess the effectiveness of the implemented change (Zhang, Yu, Yan, & Spil, 2015). In this case, nurses will use alcohol-based hand sanitizers for six months and assess if there is a reduced rate of infection transmission among patients in medical-surgical wards. This can be determined by reduced mortality rate and reduced length of stay for these patients.
After the innovation is implemented, Rogers proposed the next step as confirmation stage where the involved individuals decide to continue using the innovation. At this stage, the nurses will have confirmed the effectiveness of using alcohol-based hand sanitizer and will make it the routine hand hygiene practice so that they can minimize the transmission of hospital-acquired infections. Training of new healthcare workers on the use of alcohol-based hand sanitizer will be a necessity to all healthcare organizations after the innovation is confirmed. Also, communication of new innovation will be mandatory in healthcare organizations to minimize workers’ resistance.
Although Rogers includes all the stages as the commonly used in a successful change innovation, not all innovations are successful. Thus, he included innovation characteristics that are used to explain why innovation can be successful or not. Among them are observability, relative advantage, compatibility, trialability, and complexity. An innovation that has results that are observable has more chances to be successful and which is more superior to the current practice. In this case, if the use of alcohol-based hand sanitizer will be more superior to the regular antimicrobial soap, nurses and other medical practitioners will make use of it and make it the routine hand washing practice.
References
Leggott, K. T., Martin, M., Sklar, D., Helitzer, D., Rosett, R., Crandall, C., … & Mercer, D. (2016, September). Transformation of anesthesia for ambulatory orthopedic surgery: A mixed-methods study of a diffusion of innovation in healthcare. In Healthcare (Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 181-187). Elsevier.
Pashaeypoor, S., Ashktorab, T., Rassouli, M., & Alavi-Majd, H. (2016). Predicting the adoption of evidence-based practice using “Rogers diffusion of innovation model”. Contemporary nurse, 52(1), 85-94.
Zhang, X., Yu, P., Yan, J., & Spil, I. T. A. (2015). Using diffusion of innovation theory to understand the factors impacting patient acceptance and use of consumer e-health innovations: a case study in a primary care clinic. BMC health services research, 15(1), 71.