Critical Thinking - Leadership and Management Unit 6 – Assignment 2

Discussion #1: Jill Johnson Jill is a registered nurse, was recently appointed as the evening charge nurse on a busy postsurgical unit. She has been an active participant in the hospital’s quality assurance committee for the past 2 years since her graduation. One of the issues the committee identified as problem was the hither-than-average surgical wound infection rate on Jill’s unit. After some research, Jill determined that a major component of the high infection rate was the procedures that were used when changing postoperative dressings. After obtaining permission from the unit manager and hospital education director, Jill developed a new procedure for dressing changes incorporating the most current research. She presented the changes in a short in-service program to the unit personnel and explained the changes several times to each of the three shifts to make sure that all the nurses and staff on the unit were familiar with the new changes. The expectation was that there would be a 25 percent reduction in wound infections after the new procedures had been used for 1 month. At the end of the first month of using the new dressing change procedures, the postoperative wound infection rate showed no improvement over the previous month’s rate. At the monthly staff meeting, Jill discovered that the LPNs on the unit were refusing to use the new procedures because they “took too much time” and had reverted to the procedures they had always used before. *Please refer to the discussion rubric found in Moodle to complete this discussion as expected. All questions must be answered for the best possible grade.* 1. What was the style of leadership and management that Jill used when attempting to initiate the dressing procedure change? 2. Other than the stated reason, why do you think the LPNs did not want to use the new procedure? 3. How can Jill increase the level of compliance by the LPNs on the unit? 4. What is the role of the unit manager in initiating the new dressing change procedures?