Re-energizing champions at Humber River Hospital (HRH) during the pandemic
Summary
During the COVID-19 Pandemic, many organizations such as Humber River Hospital (HRH) were impacted due to surge in patients, shift in priorities, and the decrease in engagement of staff, leading to increase staff turnover rates. The pandemic has also decreased the awareness of BPSO and champion training uptake leaving nurses who suffer from inadequate recognition of rewards, having minimal opportunities for growth, and lack of trust and collaboration. Creating a safe culture environment by training champions to facilitate huddles, develop effective interpersonal communication, provide constructive feedback with recognition and promote professional development and leadership opportunities will build a community amongst champions, team, and management. Therefore, using my leadership knowledge from my master program “Leadership Administration, and incorporate skills from Studor Program at HRH to achieve my goal to create ways to increase uptake of champions and promote BPSO awareness in new nurses and current nursing staff. Two quality improvement project was implemented:
1. Incorporating BPSO into new staff on-boarding orientation to build awareness and capacity in new staff:
a) consist of motivation speaking, knowledge sharing, prizes, and live polls. In addition, a questionnaire is provided to all new nursing staff to complete throughout their 8-day orientation where the BPSO orientation is at the beginning and specific Best Practice Guidelines implemented at HRH are spread throughout the 8-day orientation.
2. BPSO workshop for current staff to re-energize current and new champions and create a social movement:
a) The BPSO workshop works collaboratively with the team of expert at HRH for each BPG to have discussion of purpose, tips, monitoring, and audits to assist with champions to share the knowledge to their unit.
According to NSI (2021), there are nursing shortages and healthcare needs to invest more in retaining new staff, therefore, orientation needs to be organized and engaging to help facilitate retention while understanding organization readiness and staff needs to cater BPSO workshop to support staff, leaders, and the organization. In this fellowship, I have successfully implemented an interactive BPSO orientation for new hires and created a sustainable yearly workshop for current staff to improve their clinical skills and BPSO awareness.
The interactive onboarding BPSO orientation uses the questionnaire throughout the 8 day to continue to engage the staff and tie in BPSO. Questionnaires are taken up and shared with the new staff at the end of the 8-day. To continue to build capacity and address turnover of staff, at the end of the 8-day orientation, managers and clinical practice leaders (CPLs) of each unit will receive a list of names of new staff who have indicated in the questionnaire they are interested in becoming a champion. This list of names are used to assist managers and CPLs to sign their staff for BPSO workshops, RNAO Champion workshop, and used to assist project implementation on the unit.
The BPSO workshop for current staff uses a survey with a scale to provide measureable outcomes. The survey for the new orientation will have 3 questions to identify pre and post knowledge of the orientation/training workshop for champions and the usefulness of the orientation/training workshop. Survey will be done anonymously after each session to capture honest answers. These results are shared to senior leadership along with improvement of routine audits seen due to the BPSO workshop.
In conclusion, the overall goal of this fellowship is to use Studer and my masters program “Leadership administration” to create a safe culture-learning environment, increase nursing capacity to have leadership opportunities, and promote change behaviour in new hires and current staff through increasing champion recruitment and retentions.
Outcomes
Short-term outcomes for patient and client population were updated practice lead to change skills and care for health care professionals at HRH leading to improved patient outcomes. For example the BPSO workshop provided proper use of BPG will improve assessment, intervention strategies, and advance clinical skills. Health care professional and champions felt more competent and provided more quality safe care for patients leading to improved patient outcomes and satisfaction.
Long- term outcomes are patient satisfaction due to improved champion awareness and motivation to make a change initiative. Improved patient care from evidence based training and simulations from the BPSO workshop will improve quality care to patients. There will also be more momentum and sustainability to build champion capacity as seen in the on boarding process. BPSO and champion engagement are captured during on boarding to sustain turnover rates that health care organizations are experiencing.
Short-term outcomes for colleagues and staff were gained updated knowledge and practice through attending BPSO workshop and leadership opportunities. There was also a sense of comradery and safe culture as the BPSO workshop created an open environment to explore idea, networking, and working together on hands on simulation.
Long-term outcomes for colleagues and staff were the increase in self-confidence through the safe culture environment that was created. Self-satisfaction and accomplishments leading to more staff engagement was also seen. Staff and leaders at the BPSO workshop received Shirts, pens, and certificate, which is worn on the unit. Creating a sense of team and self worth. This had led to more awareness of BPSO champions on the unit when other staff or colleagues see the T-shirt and a QR code of a high-level overview of BPSO champions. Studies have shown with increase in staff satisfaction and engagement, there is an increase in staff retention.
In conclusion, both the BPSO workshop and the onboarding BPSO education was positively received by champions, as they reported increased understanding of best practices. Champions who incorporated these skills into their practice became a resource for their colleagues. Participants also provided strong ratings for the effectiveness of workshop content and delivery, supporting future sustainability.
Overall experience
Due to COVID 19 leading to a decrease uptake of champions and decrease in BPSO awareness, as a new BPSO clinical lead at Humber River Hospital, my overall goal is to increase my understanding and expertise related to re-energizing and shaping operational change to provide a supportive learning environment, promote change behaviours, and increase leadership engagement to foster champions. I want to incorporate my knowledge and skills from Studer program at Humber River Hospital (HRH) and my leadership knowledge obtained from my masters program “Leadership Administration”, to achieve my learning goal and to create ways to increase uptake of champions and promote BPSO awareness in new nursing hires and current nursing staff. Therefore, the creation of the first and annual BPSO workshop was created for current staff and BPSO education during on boarding of new staff to help with building engagement and champion capacity using a sustainable process.
Working with my mentor and Following a Quality Improvement Action plan, multiple knowledge translation strategies such as pedagogical and simulated teaching styles were used to facilitate champion understanding of selected best practice guidelines. The BPSO Workshop evaluation comprised of a pre and post participant knowledge survey, as well as a participant experience survey. While the on boarding BPSO education used interactive and innovation to create new staff engagement to become a future champion. Due to its overwhelming success, there was a second BPSO workshop. Moving forward the workshop will be an updated annual BPSO workshop, which changes based on the needs of the organization and staff.
Some lessons I learned was understanding the needs of front-line staff and organizational readiness can build cohesiveness between people, systems, and performance measurements required to synchronize and coordinate champion capacity.
