Create a 2-4 page report on an interview you have conducted with a health care
professional. You will identify an issue from the interview that could be improved with an interdisciplinary
approach, and review best practices and evidence to address the issue.
As a baccalaureate-prepared nurse, your participation and leadership in interdisciplinary teams will be vital to
the health outcomes for your patients and organization. One way to approach designing an improvement
project is to use the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement describes it
thus:
The Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle is shorthand for testing a change in the real work setting—by planning it,
trying it, observing the results, and acting on what is learned. This is the scientific method adapted for actionoriented learning…Essentially, the PDSA cycle helps you test out change ideas on a smaller scale before
evaluating the results and making adjustments before potentially launching into a somewhat larger scale
You might also recognize that the PDSA cycle resembles the nursing process. The benefit of gaining
experience with this model of project design is that it provides nurses with an opportunity to ideate and lead
improvements. For this assessment, you will not be implementing all of the PDSA cycle. Instead, you are being
asked to interview a health care professional of your choice to determine what kind of interdisciplinary problem
he or she is experiencing or has experienced in the workplace. This interview, in Assessment 2, will inform the
research that you will conduct to propose a plan for interdisciplinary collaboration in Assessment 3.
It would be an excellent choice to complete the PDSA Cycle activity prior to developing the report. The activity
consists of four questions that create the opportunity to check your understanding of best-practices related to
each stage of the PDSA cycle. The information gained from completing this formative will promote your
success with the Interview and Interdisciplinary Issue Identification report. This will take just a few minutes of
your time and is not graded.
Reference
Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (n.d.). How to improve. Retrieved from
http://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/HowtoImprove/default.aspx
Demonstration of Proficiency
Competency 2: Explain how interdisciplinary collaboration can be used to achieve desired patient and systems
outcomes.
Summarize an interview focused on past or current issues at a health care organization.
Describe collaboration approaches from the literature that could be relevant in establishing or improving an
interdisciplinary team to address an organizational issue.
Competency 3: Describe ways to incorporate evidence-based practice within an interdisciplinary team.
Identify an issue from an interview for which an evidence-based interdisciplinary approach would be
appropriate.
Competency 4: Explain how change management theories and leadership strategies can enable
interdisciplinary teams to achieve specific organizational goals.
Describe change theories and a leadership strategy that could help develop an interdisciplinary solution to an
organizational issue.
Competency 5: Apply professional, scholarly, evidence-based communication strategies to impact patient,
interdisciplinary team, and systems outcomes.
Organize content so ideas flow logically with smo
Sample Solution